opened in August<\/a> at 1050 Schadt Ave., is operating as a restaurant without proper permits. Owner Chade Sankari says it\u2019s legally a retail store.<\/p>\nOfficials considered testimony for the appeal case during a zoning hearing board meeting Tuesday evening, but did not issue a ruling.<\/p>\n
Zoning and Codes Officer Christopher Gittinger said Tuesday he received multiple complaints about the location, specifically that SMP Steaks was a restaurant but hadn\u2019t been approved that way.<\/p>\n
Gittinger said he issued a use permit for a retail business that included sandwiches Oct. 15, 2025, and limited the square footage of space customers could access. He acknowledged during the meeting that parts of a particular zoning use can meet multiple definitions, but when he visited Aug. 11, \u201cit was clearly a restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gittinger noted that the reported 13 parking spaces SMP Steaks has is not enough for the 42 seats inside and 16 seats outside that he counted. The seating area where people would eat food was about two-thirds of the customer area, he added, with the remaining being a small retail area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you take into account the kitchen area where the food was prepared, it\u2019s more like 3 to 1, the restaurant use compared to a retail setup,\u201d he said, highlighting that January 2026 floor plans confirmed the ratios he observed of customer seating and the kitchen to the retail area.<\/p>\n
Gittinger said they sent the enforcement notice Aug. 12.<\/p>\n
\u201cI determined that the retail use was a permitted use in this zoning district, and that an incidental or accessory sale of sandwiches could be included with that use,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, the retail use has to be the principal use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attorney Joel Wiener, who represented Sankari at the Tuesday meeting, questioned Gittinger about SMP Steaks, its original application and the township\u2019s zoning ordinance.<\/p>\n
Through questioning, Gittinger acknowledged that SMP Steaks didn\u2019t exceed the limit of customer-accessible space, that he didn\u2019t previously state that food sale could only be an accessory use, that some retail is being sold there and that he wasn\u2019t aware of an ordinance provision that says what percentage of retail a business needs to sell to still be considered retail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think it\u2019s something that\u2019s affecting the decision, it should be well communicated, not done with a surprise after a tremendous investment\u2019s been made in the property based upon a use form,\u201d Wiener told The Morning Call afterward, arguing the current use aligns with the original application.<\/p>\n
Sankari purchased and fit out the Schadt Avenue property through the business Zwaitini Inc. based on last year\u2019s use permit, Wiener said.<\/p>\n
While several attendees intended to speak on the case, zoning Solicitor William Fries said they should pause the hearing for Tuesday\u2019s other cases, particularly to make sure cases are heard within 60 days of application. The next zoning hearing board meeting is 7 p.m. Nov. 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou guys are what we are \u2014 family,\u201d Sankari told the crowd before the zoning hearing board moved on. \u201cEverybody who showed up here is family to us, and that\u2019s the bottom line. We are Whitehall. This is a representation of what Whitehall is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of people packed the public meeting room in Whitehall Township Tuesday as a sandwich shop works to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,182,435,436,289,432],"class_list":["post-311831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-local-news","tag-restaurants-food-and-drink","tag-retail","tag-things-to-do","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}