MIDLAND, Texas — Whenever you run a small business, you always have to keep up with city ordinances.
It's why the owner of The Tailgate Sean Elphick went to the Midland City Council meeting Tuesday to try and renew the bar's special use designation permits in order to continue operating and serving alcohol.
However, the bar has been operating with expired permits for quite some time, which led to the council asking questions as to why they have been expired for so long.
“We have a lot of ordinances throughout the city that we try to stay on top of and we try to make people do and follow these ordinances," District 2 City Councilman John Norman said. "So this one was a pretty big ordinance that a lot of things weren't followed in this ordinance.”
Those expired permits are being highlighted because The Tailgate has expanded occupancy in order to host bigger events.
Elphick answered the questions asked to him by the city council, saying that The Tailgate has also been trying to find a bigger location to host those aforementioned larger events and there was some difficulty applying for the permits.
Currently, The Tailgate are on a plot of land owned by HEB that is rented out from them. Even though they are looking for new locations, they still need to keep their current location updated.
“We are needing to add in a new fire lane around the whole facility and update our bathrooms as well," Elphick said. "We’ve gone from four hundred occupancy to a thousand, so we need to add more bathrooms.”
Despite operating with expired permits, the city was willing to help The Tailgate.
“The city has been great, they’ve helped us a ton through this process, we’re in between the expired SUD and the new one," Elphick said. “We are looking to just update that and the city has helped us a bunch with that."
The Tailgate are still hosting an event Wednesday despite having expired permits. Elphick told the city council that he couldn't cancel the event and was willing to pay a fine of up to $2,000 should the city deem it fit to give one.
Ariel Herrera, a co-owner of The Tailgate, had this to say in an email statement.
"We have plans to move The Tailgate to a bigger location so we can accommodate a larger capacity that is in compliance with the city. The location we have now is large enough for the current events we are holding, but we are wanting to host bigger events & concerts. Our plans are to hold events at our current location for the next year while our new location is under construction," Herrera said. "We are three entrepreneurs with a goal to bring more entertainment to Midland, TX. We will always do our best to grow & improve- our goal at the city council meeting was just that. We are so grateful to the City of Midland for helping us along this journey, we could have never anticipated the growth we’ve seen in the past year! "