Constant police calls from two feuding Cedar Rapids businesses prompted police to cite both as public nuisance properties.

The sudden closing of Jerseys Downtown on 1st Avenue in Cedar Rapids on Saturday wasn’t the end of the story. The city’s SAFE-CR nuisance abatement program determined the squabbling between Jerseys and neighboring business Harold’s Chicken is taking up too much police time and has to stop.

Police say employees at both businesses have called so many times to report nuisance complaints against each other it’s cost the city about 150 man hours to investigate and sort it all out.

Police say the problem is really a civil issue between the two involving shared kitchen space and access,

So on Monday, the city took steps to issue citations to both businesses for violating a city nuisance ordinance involving too many unnecessary police calls and requests for service.

As declared “Nuisance Properties,” both businesses will have to sit down with city staffers and work on how to end the problem. Failure to do that could mean police would start charging for a response to any nuisance calls at the rate of $94.00 per officer hour.

The dispute first came to the attention of the public on Saturday when Jerseys Downtown posted a Facebook notice announcing an immediate closing. A follow up call from the owner to TV9 indicated there were concerns about staff safety.

But whatever the motivation, public safety spokesperson Greg Buelow says the calls for a police response have to end.

“When you look at the amount of city services involved in this to solve this issue, obviously they need to work it out,” Buelow said.

Amanda Grieder, SAFE-CR program manager, said “the goal of SAFE-CR is to ensure that one property isn’t using all the taxpayer funded services and that’s why we encourage nuisance property owners to file abatement plans.”

Police emphasized the nuisance citation does not have anything to do with more serious public safety calls. One such was a “shots fired” incident outside both businesses last month. Grieder said such calls as not counted when determining a nuisance property.

TV9 was unable to contact managers at Jerseys or the owners of the Roosevelt Apartments building for comment.

The owner of Harold’s said he wanted to study the city’s nuisance citation first before commenting.

In some of the social media comments about the closing, some insisted there were food safety problems that forced the closing.

An inspector with Linn County Public Health said Jerseys was not closed due to those types of violations. Last Friday, an inspector did note that Jerseys employees were told not to bring prepared food from the shared kitchen through a basement to serve customers. That was something they had been doing to get around the access issue.

But if that were corrected, the inspector says Jerseys had no significant health violations that required them to close.