V.M. Ybor residents unhappy about Trinity Cafe will protest at City Council

Cindy Davis is program director with Trinity. She says that her organization has done everything by the book, and it's only a matter of raising sufficient funds to renovate the property before they will begin serving meals in the area. "It's zoned properly, so there should be no reason why we cannot move in there."

She says Trinity is about 70 percent toward its fundraising goal of $350,000.

Bailey says she and neighborhood association president Kim Headland have met with City Councilman Frank Reddick and persuaded him to put the issue on Thursday's agenda. They want City Council to force the City's Zoning Department to update its zoning matrix, claiming that current zoning laws allow Trinity to classify itself as a regular restaurant when it isn't.

"If this was a drive-through restaurant, they would have to go to City Council for approval, but because they're calling themselves a restaurant and there's no zoning classification for soup kitchen, they're allowed to do this," Bailey says.

Among the members of Trinity's board are former House Republican Trey Traviesa and Ken Jones, the number one man in charge of the Republican National Convention. Earlier, V.M. Ybor critics had tried to tie Trinity's move with the RNC, but have backed off on those charges.

Though the parties have met, Kelly Bailey complains that Trinity hasn't been a good neighbor because its principals never came before the V.M. Ybor board before purchasing the property in the neighborhood last year.

"Their big thing is about serving people with dignity and respect, but they don't care about what respect these people show the 20 hours outside the service they're open."

Trinity Cafe's Cindy Davis acknowledges that there is neighborhood opposition. "They're not happy with us, but we did meet with them several times," she says.

Zoning Administrator Cathy Coyle is scheduled to address the Council on the status of the Trinity Cafe move on Thursday.