When Torchy’s opened at Williamsburg Village on Thursday, it was the highest grossing opening day in the company’s history. Memphians, as expected, turned out for the taco restaurant that inspires a cultish devotion in Texas, particularly its Austin hometown.

New Eats: ‘Damn good’ Torchy’s Tacos is open

But some locals aren’t as thrilled about it. Tammy Rivera lives in the neighborhood just behind the development and says on-street parking is a problem.

“It’s a neighborhood of people walking, kids playing in the front yard. I think this is going to change the dynamic of the neighborhood and I don’t feel good about it,” she said.

The strip center has been commercial property since 1964, said Boyle Investment Co. broker Jonathan Aur.

“When we built this, Mendenhall was just a two-lane road. It’s been there as long as the neighborhood has, so it’s not like it’s something new.”

In 2019 Boyle started renovating the center and the first restaurant, Southall Café, opened in September 2020, followed by Hen House in January, Greys Fine Cheese and Entertaining in May and Torchy’s Tacos last week.

Crumbl Cookies will open in about a month, and there are non-food businesses such as Mrs. Post and Memphis Paints, the Benjamin Moore paint distributor that has long been in the center.

There are 109 total parking places, eight of them handicapped spaces, and right now about a dozen are blocked off for construction.

“We closed curb cuts, which is unheard of, we re-angled parking, and we added parking in the back,” Aur said. “We don’t let Hen House open before 3 p.m., we don’t let Southall stay open after 3 p.m. and Crumbl has no inside seating.”

The opening day crowd at Torchy’s was larger than expected.

“There were 200 people standing in line when the place opened,” Aur said. “That obviously caused some parking problems.”

Torchy’s is on the south end of the center that extends down the west side of Mendenhall, just south of the railroad tracks at Poplar. The cross street is Spottswood, which is a main entrance into the neighborhood of small tidy houses just behind Williamsburg Village.

The first block, the one closest to Torchy’s, is a no-parking zone and there’s a sign posted; police have been ticketing cars that are parked there. But beyond that, people can park on public streets as long as they follow the rules.

“You can park on a city street as long as you’re not blocking the roadway or it’s not a designated no parking area,” said Memphis Police Department Lt. Karen Rudolph, a public information officer. “A lot of people don’t like it or aren’t used to it, but it’s a city street and people can park there.”

The main rules that apply in this case are that drivers can’t park within 15 feet of a fire hydrant, they can’t block driveways or mailboxes and must not park more than 12 inches from the curb. Click here to see other parking rules in the city. 

“We appreciate the neighbors’ patience with this,” Aur said. “We know they’ve been dealing with construction and that it was frustrating. But we think this is a good thing for the neighborhood and we spent a lot of money on it.”

There’s an empty lot on the opposite corner of Spottswood and Mendenhall, but Aur said it’s too expensive to purchase for parking.

“They’re asking $850,000 and it would cost about $200,000 to pave it,” he said. “That’s not going to be a parking lot.”

The house directly behind Torchy’s is for sale. Despite rumors that homeowner Elaine Capps and Boyle are in negotiations, Aur and Capps both say that’s simply not true. Capps, who is an investor and does not live in the home on Moss Road, said she reached out to Boyle in 2019 and the company had no interest at the time.

On Friday at 12:30 p.m., there were 12 cars parked on Spottswood, five illegally, and 15 on Moss, the road right behind the center. At the same time on Saturday, there were 16 cars on the two streets, and at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, 35.

This isn’t the first neighborhood to battle street parking; Midtown residents have been doing it for years. In Cooper-Young, almost all parking for restaurants and other commerce is on the street. Residents on side streets around Overton Square have struggled with parking and homeowners on Monroe successfully petitioned the city to close their street to parking in 2014, not long after Kelly English opened The Second Line.

It’s one of the reasons he’s moving Restaurant Iris to Laurelwood, in the space formerly occupied by the Grove Grill.

“Our situation is worse than theirs. My street was made private by the city council and part of the reasoning was because we had a big parking lot across the street. But now that parking lot is a hotel,” English said.

“I can’t afford to run a 12-table restaurant with a valet, but I can’t run Restaurant Iris without a valet. Yes, there’s a garage, but talk to me about that in January, or when it’s raining. People don’t want to walk.”

Matthew Miller, the managing partner of Torchy’s, said valet is not an option for him because of the quick turnaround of his restaurant, which is fast casual.

“If other people over here want to use it, I think it’s great, but for us it wouldn’t work because they’d need their car almost as soon as it was parked,” he said.

He said he’s made sure that his employees don’t park in the no-parking area and has asked them to park across the street, on Mt. Moriah, behind Gus’s and the Half Shell.

“And if they see anyone park in the no-parking zone, I’ve asked them to let them know that it’s illegal and that they might get a ticket, but we can’t make them move,” he said.

Rivera said that she’s seen many people crossing Mendenhall, and she thinks it’s dangerous. The Half Shell has been on the east side of the street since 1983 and owner Danny Sumrall agrees.

“What happens at night, especially in the fall when it’s getting dark early and people are parking on my side of the street and walking across when there’s traffic? From a safety standpoint, that scares me,” he says.

He has a security guard and said that if people park in his lot and are seen going to another restaurant, they’ll be asked to move their car.

“We could tow them, I guess, but who wants to do that to someone?” he said.

“I wish they’d taken a better look at parking on the front end. We need a lot of parking around here,” Sumrall said. “At lunch, you might have Bill meeting Bob and Jill meeting Jim and they come in four cars.

“But look, I think this is all a great and viable location and I’m not going to bust on anybody. It’s a survival game. My hope is that it settles down and a plan evolves to accommodate everyone, whatever that is. For now I’m going to keep my parking safe and secure.”

Miller said that an area resident, not Rivera, has upset his employees by driving through the parking lot and making obscene hand gestures.

“There’s no reason for that,” he said. “It’s going to level out. We’re incredibly busy right now, but we all know it’s going to slow down in a few weeks.”

Aur said the same.

“I remember when Hattie B.’s opened (on Cooper in Midtown). People on side streets had signs up saying ‘Don’t park in front of my house,’ but they couldn’t enforce that,” he said. “That didn’t last long because things slowed down. Let’s all catch our breath and see what this is like in 30 days or in 60 days. If something still needs to happen, we’ll think about it again.”