With a unanimous decision Aug. 15, Eatonton City Council brought a nearly three-year wait to an end for Dot2Dot Inn owners Karen and Richard Garrett. At issue was the zoning required for the Garretts to provide meal service to non-guests and catering for special events at their historic home, turned bed-and-breakfast (BnB), on Eatonton’s Washington Ave.
After confirming the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission also unanimously recommended approval a week earlier of the change required to the city’s ordinances, city council then heard from several local residents supporting the measure.
Afterward, council members entered a brief debate among themselves over whether to accept further P&Z recommendation to extend Friday and Saturday hours to 11 p.m., beyond the originally requested 10 p.m. for all nights, but that measure was not adopted.
At the suggestion of councilmember Janie Reid, a stipulation also was added requiring a minimum seven-day time limit for making application to hold special events at BnB locations within Eatonton city limits. Reid also stressed that signage at these businesses must adhere to current city requirements and size limitations.
“We’re really pleased that we’re almost at the end of the road. We still have to apply for this to apply to our business, but that should be the last step. That should be straightforward,” Richard Garrett said after the zoning change was confirmed.
“The milestone tonight is that now bed-and-breakfasts can do what we were doing, which is to serve food to non-lodging guests and host events. That was half of our business. So, to be able to get that half of the business back again, get back to where we should have been, yeah, we’re really pleased. We just wish it hadn’t come to this and taken so long.”
During the meeting Garrett answered councilmember Alvin Butts question about the origins of the couple’s Dot2Dot business name, explaining it stemmed from a previous café they operated in a racially and culturally diverse area of Boston, where they lived before moving in 2017 to Eatonton. He said his wife, a cordon bleu chef, wanted to use the café and her food to “connect the dots” and bring the community there together.
“And it worked, too,” he told council. “By the time we left we had African Americans, Hispanics, Irish, everyone in the neighborhood coming there and loving the food.
“And we all know we have some similar divisions between races, between neighbors, here in Eatonton sometimes,” he added. “So we thought continuing that effort to connect the dots, to bring more people together and share food and good times, would work here, too.”
Beyond the negative impact on the couple’s business, Karen Garrett admitted afterward that the zoning fight had stripped away “a lot of my joy” over the past year.
“Cooking is what I do. And as Richard explained, why we adopted Dot2Dot was about joining the community. And I fully believe that breaking bread over a table is something that brings people together,” she said.
“I think it worked really well in Boston and I know it could work really well here. We’ve seen how it works really well,” Garrett continued. “So yes, it seems like the end of one long road and now we get the application in. Hopefully we’ll be back up and in business and you know, maybe sometimes it takes that precedent to open the door to everyone else.”