MIDLAND, Texas — The Tailgate in Midland has been bringing Midlanders music and drinks since 2020, but they have been operating out of compliance for quite some time.
The city recently told owners of The Tailgate that one such issue is their parking lot, which has been kicking up dirt and dust. This effects not only drivers, but pedestrians who may be walking past the area.
“I think the main thing is they were concerned about the safety of the parking lot for our customers and that is also a concern of ours," Tailgate co-owner Ariel Herrera said. "So it was an ultimate goal of us working together and finding a solution for this issue.”
Which is why The Tailgate recently completed their new parking lot to try and get back in compliance with the city.
Made with asphalt millings, the parking lot should hopefully do away with any issues that come with the dirt getting kicked up.
“We had a big issue with water and the flooding there so we kind of laid that to rest and expanding into six acres of parking lots with over 800 spots," Tailgate partner JD Granado said. "[That] brought up our compliance up to that and also our capacity.”
While it certainly helps with getting The Tailgate back in compliance with the city, the extra spaces certainly don’t hurt when it comes to bringing in extra customers.
“Think for our capacity, it helps us to get more people out here and two, just get in compliance with the city," Granado said. "We never wanted to be someone that people didn't think we wanted to do it and it's something we needed to do, but we also needed to find a way to do it that was gonna be beneficial to us in the long run.”
The journey to get here wasn’t the easiest, and there are still a few hurdles to clear.
“This was the biggest challenge for us to get back in compliance and our goal is to get in compliance with the city," Herrera said. "We want to do things the right way and the parking lot was a huge factor in this. So now we're working with the city to kind of fine tune the rest of these details, but we'll be back in compliance very soon.”
The Tailgate has checked a few boxes already with some of the additions they’ve made.
"We did a fire zone all the way around our venue. Also we added men's and women's restrooms," Granado said. "We are moving an office this next coming week and after that we should be 100% in compliance. It's been a long road but we're happy to be there.”
The project racked up quite the tab of $300,000. Since the land that The Tailgate sits on is owned by HEB, the ultimate goal for owners of The Tailgate is to find some land they can call their own.
“I also think our goal for The Tailgate is to move to a new location which we're actively looking at right now. For us to spend over $300,000 for a parking lot, it wasn't a second guess, we want to do what the city wanted but also to we wanted to be cost effective," Granado said. "We're business owners at the end of the day and small business owners so we wanted to make sure that we were making an investment in the right way.”
When reached out for comment, the City of Midland responded by saying in a statement that, “Operators at The Tailgate will be ticketed at each event until they are in full compliance on all issues. We know their work continues."