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The owner of Eureka’s Vista del Mar, a dockside restaurant and bar at the intersection of Waterfront Drive and Commercial Street, is not very happy with the City of Eureka right now.

Kito Vorobik, who purchased the blue-collar watering hole in December of 2016, took to the internet yesterday to launch a change.org petition lambasting the city over plans to install an above-ground fuel storage tank along the western fence line behind his establishment.

“[M]y business is facing a significant threat that could not only affect my livelihood but also pose serious risks to the safety and well-being of our neighborhood,” his petition states.

Reached by phone, Vorobik said he was notified by city staff in June about plans to remove a big underground fuel tank near his property and replace it with an above-ground tank that will eliminate a handful of parking spots often used by his customers. 

“I’m mainly concerned about my property value and what I could maybe do with the property in the future,” he said, though he also noted that his property line encompasses only the footprint of the restaurant, plus a four-foot setback.

His petition, which had gathered 51 signatures as of this writing, also cites environmental and public safety concerns and says the city should have given him more notice. 

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Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery told the Outpost that state law requires the city to remove any and all single-walled underground storage tanks before the end of the year and replace them with above-ground double containment systems. There’s a tank buried near the Vista that’s been there since the 1950s or ‘60s. It stores fuel for the local commercial and recreational fishing fleets.

“It’s the only fuel we have on Humboldt Bay … ,” Slattery said, adding, “[This location] has been an active commercial fishing dock since before ‘the V.D.’ [Vista del Mar] went in,” 120-odd years ago. 

The city plans to install a new 25,000-gallon fuel storage tank (with 20,000 gallons of storage for diesel and 5,000 gallons of storage for regular) that will be enclosed under a covered structure that’s 12 to 13 feet tall, counting the foundation, with a catwalk around the top of the tank for maintenance purposes. The structure will also be surrounded by a fence of vinyl-coated chain link. 

Slattery said the city gave Vorobik plenty of notice about these plans and has offered to work with him, even agreeing to build a fence or screen of some kind. 

But the bottom line, he said, is that this location makes the most sense because, not only is it zoned properly, with all of the necessary permits, but it’s also directly adjacent to the underground plumbing that supplies fuel to the dispensing hardware at the dock. The city put the removal project out for bids and will soon put the new tank installation project out for bids. 

Slattery noted that there will be no open-air fueling near the restaurant, and he argued that the new tank will actually eliminate environmental risks inherent with the existing underground setup. He added that all the other parking spots surrounding the Vista del Mar, including a large lot on the east side of the building, are on city-owned property, meaning parking for Vorobik’s business is effectively being subsidized by taxpayers.

More to the point, the infrastructure is necessary.

“We have to do this,” the city manager said. “The viability of our commercial fleet definitely takes precedence.”

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Vorobik said he doesn’t expect his online petition to actually prevent the city from moving ahead with its plans. But he pointed out that the law requiring the city to install this above-ground tank was passed more than a decade ago, giving Eureka plenty of time for more public engagement and exploring other possible solutions. He’s annoyed that this is all happening at the last minute.

“This is just typical City of Eureka,” he said. “They just don’t give a shit about local businesses.”

In the Outpost’s phone conversation with Slattery, he said to pass along the message to Vorobik that the city is still willing to work with him, and he added, “Tell Kito I’ll still come and get his fish tacos, ‘cause they’re delicious.”

When we passed this along to Vorobik, he was nonplussed. He offered a concise reply: “Eureka, do better.”