The trial is slated to begin at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in Glendale Superior Court.
The city attorney’s office brought the charges against Montrose Collection owners Arman and Takui Aivazian and their corporate partner ATNA Enterprises, after a city inspector found that the establishment, on at least once occasion, operated as a banquet hall.
The unnamed official surveyed the premises and revealed that “the entire premises were used for a single private party,” Deputy City Atty. Dorine Martirosian said.
The facility was not open to the public and was not being used as a restaurant, she said.
The Board of Zoning Appeals subsequently revoked the restaurant’s operating permit, which was contingent on a 2002 ordinance that prohibits restaurants from using more than 30% of their facilities for private parties.
The Aivazians have maintained that because The Montrose Collection, at 2831 Honolulu Ave., was operating before the 2002 ordinance was introduced, it should be exempt from the 30% threshold and that its expansion does not represent a “major change” since it had been operating as a 5,000-square-foot facility before the expansion, attorney Michael Levin said.
But in revoking the parking reduction permit, the city’s zoning administrator and Board of Zoning Appeals determined that the restaurant’s 1,200-square-foot expansion in 2005 had stripped it of its grandfather rights and that it was operating primarily as a banquet hall in violation of zoning laws.
The case to be presented by Martirosian is slated to include testimony from up to seven witnesses — most of whom are city employees directly involved with the investigation, including Neighborhood Services Administrator Sam Engel and Zoning Administrator Edith Fuentes.
“The city is fairly confident,” she said.
But Levin is confident the trial will be dismissed before it is handed to the jury for deliberation.
“Once the evidence is presented . . . [the prosecution] is not going to be in a position to meet their burden of proof,” he said. “I have no doubt.”
