Will the lack of a single parking spot in the Beach douse the dream of a couple of longtime friends to open a barbecue restaurant?

Karim Ahmed and Carmen Di Maria signed a 10-year lease this summer on a property at 2084 Queen St. E. where they hoped to open an eatery with “top quality Kansas City-style barbecue food,’’ complete with a top-of-the-line, wood-burning $24,000 smoker.

They had originally been planning to open the restaurant at 2086 Queen St. E., also owned by the same landlord, and had researched what they needed to do with City of Toronto staff.

Ahmed says he was told by business permit staff that the restaurant was an allowed use at this location and there was no requirement for a parking spot. Then the landlord said that 2084 Queen St. E., next door, was available, and they decided they liked it even better as a location for their Wood Firepit & Tap. So they signed a lease.

Ahmed admits he did not check to see if a parking spot, in front or behind the 165-square-metre space at 2084 Queen St. E., was required. “I take responsibility for that,” he says. “I assumed it would be the same as the next-door space.’’

But apparently it’s not. Ahmed and Di Maria will meet in early January with the city’s committee of adjustment to see if they can get an exemption to the bylaw, as there’s no space on the property, back or front, to fit a parking space. Previously, the site hosted an audio equipment store.

The city zoning bylaw stipulates that a building used for a restaurant in this area of Queen St. E. has to maintain a parking space for each 100 square metres of total floor area.

The two men, both 43, have sunk their life savings into fulfilling their dream, one that has its roots in Montreal, where they both grew up. They’ve been pals since their teens, when they started part-time jobs at a hospital kitchen and discovered they were both children of first-generation immigrants, from modest backgrounds, sharing a passion for good food.

“We’re brothers from different mothers,” says Di Maria, over the phone from Montreal, where he works running a kitchen catering department, a job he hopes to leave to run the kitchen of Wood Firepit & Tap. “He (Ahmed) is considered family by my family,” says Di Maria, a Sicilian-American whose family moved to Montreal from New Jersey. “I grew up around the grill.”

Di Maria and Ahmed are godfathers to each other’s children, and Di Maria intends to live near Ahmed, who lives in Ajax and quit his job in the financial services field this past summer to concentrate on getting the restaurant up and running.

They did their “due diligence” in picking a location and decided the Beach was a good fit, with its many young families, couples and older people.

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“The community feels warm and supportive,” says Ahmed. He and Di Maria have circulated a petition in the neighbourhood supporting their bid for a zoning exemption and have collected about 100 signatures.

“We’re just two families from middle-class backgrounds; we’re not corporations,” Ahmed says.

“We just have our savings and we’ve put them into this. I’m the kind of guy that, when I watch TV, I’ve always got it on the food channel. My wife says, ‘You’re still watching food, at 10 or 11 at night?’ It’s our dream, this place.”