Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 8, 1992 TAG: 9202080366
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MAI TAI OWNERS SELLING HOUSE
The owners of the Mai Tai restaurant in Roanoke County have decided to sell the house they bought for their employees to end a hassle with their neighbors."We decided to sell, [but] not because we're afraid of them," Jude Ying said Friday. "We just want to leave peacefully."
If he thought the neighbors didn't want his employees living there simply because they were Chinese, he would put up a fight, Ying said. But, he said, "If I were in [the neighbors'] shoes, I would want the restaurant workers to move out, too."
Ying and his partner, Teddy Yang, bought the house on Pilot Boulevard in the Castle Hill neighborhood, a two-minute drive from the Mai Tai, last fall. It is common, they said earlier this week, for Chinese restaurant owners to buy a small house for their cooks, waiters and dishwashers to live in, rent-free.
But the comings and goings of the restaurant employees stirred a lot of talk and suspicion among their neighbors.
The neighbors met with county Supervisor Fuzzy Minnix and county Planning Director Terry Harrington on Sunday.
At a meeting of the county Planning Commission two days later, the neighbors claimed that 19 people were living in the house - a claim the restaurateurs strongly dispute. They also hinted - with no evidence whatsoever - that the employees might be illegal aliens and might be involved in illicit activity.
They asked the Planning Commission to consider an ordinance that would limit the number of unrelated people who can live in a house in a single-family residential zoning district.
The restaurateurs met with a couple of the neighbors on Wednesday and Thursday, after a newspaper story about the dispute appeared, and decided to sell the house.
"I respect them for what they're doing . . . not wanting to stir up any trouble," said O.T. Angle, who lives next to the house.
When Castle Hill was laid out in the mid-1950s, the lots were sold with several restrictive covenants, one of which read, "No persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall own or occupy any [house]."
Of course, restrictive covenants of that sort later became illegal and unenforceable.
And Angle said race played no part in his, or most of the neighbors', concerns. "I don't care if they are black, yellow, polka-dot, green. It's just what they were using the house for."
The neighbors were concerned about the number of people living in the house and the traffic, he said. Many older residents of the neighborhood got worried when they saw so many strangers coming and going, he said.
But there might be one or two people in the neighborhood - Korean War veterans, possibly - who simply don't like Chinese people, he admitted.
Once Ying and his partner decided to sell the house, though, "We agreed to put all that behind us," Angle said.
In fact, he said, he is going to encourage his neighbors to show the restaurant owners their good will by dining at the Mai Tai.
Meanwhile, it's been business as usual at the Mai Tai. Friday - after a favorable review of the restaurant, written before the dispute, appeared in this newspaper's Extra section - Ying opened for lunch at 11:30 a.m.
Within minutes, the restaurant was packed.