For months now, brisket-loving folk in the Bay Area have been in a state of heady anticipation, as they looked forward to the opening of Horn Barbecue, a Texas-influenced barbecue joint located in the former West Oakland home of Brown Sugar Kitchen. The spot is set to be the debut restaurant for Matt Horn, the talented pit master who has been hailed by pundits as the future of Bay Area barbecue on the merits of his wildly popular pop-ups, which have already become the stuff of Bay Area legend.

But now, due to a permitting issue with the city of Oakland, the restaurant’s expected opening date — which was already postponed to April from an initial December target — will be delayed indefinitely. In fact, Horn tells Eater SF, the dispute with the city is significant enough that it might jeopardize Horn Barbecue’s ability to open at all, at least in this particular West Oakland location.

At issue is what Horn describes as an empty “slab of concrete” behind the restaurant where he had planned to build the pit room that he needs to do his style of wood-smoked barbecue. Essentially, it’s a “glorified shed” that he needs to build to house his smoker, the chef says. But what Horn eventually learned was that because that little slice of land is owned by the city, he needed to apply for an encroachment permit in order to use the space — hence the initial opening delay. On Wednesday, however, he got notice from the city that the application has been denied.

An email from an engineer with Oakland’s Department of Transportation, which Horn shared with Eater SF, reads as follows: “I regret to inform you that after much discussion between Department of Transportation and Planning and Building Department, we cannot support consumption of the Public Right of Way for ground-level expansion of a private restaurant. The permit application will be voided.”

Essentially, Horn says, the city is treating the space behind the restaurant as though it were a sidewalk — a space that needs to be kept available for public use. But the space in question is not anything like a sidewalk, Horn stresses: “It’s an area where trash has been dumped; it’s an area where there’s graffiti. It’s not a natural area for people to walk.”

Eater SF reached out to the city engineer who issued the denial notice for an explanation of the city’s rationale, but has not received a response as of publication time. Horn, too, says he has not yet gotten a response from the city in terms of what an appeals process might look like — or whether it’s even possible to appeal the decision.

The upshot is that the opening will pushed back at least a couple of months, says Horn, who’s also in the process of opening a fried chicken sandwich spot called Kowbird. But because there aren’t any other viable spots for him to install his smoker at the restaurant, this decision puts his ability to even open at his current 2534 Mandela Parkway location in jeopardy. One option, he says, would be to try to smoke his meats offsite each morning, though that would be logistically challenging. But the other possibility is that he’d have to find a new location for the restaurant altogether.

“I could have went anywhere to open up Horn Barbecue, but we decided to do it in West Oakland because we felt there was history and culture,” Horn says, explaining that his earliest pop-ups were all in West Oakland, not far from the restaurant site. “People came and they supported us, and it was a really beautiful thing.”

Horn is hopeful that the city will work with him to resolve the situation, especially because he feels like he’s trying to contribute something positive to the West Oakland community. Still, he says, the process has been challenging. “Not only have I been paying rent on the building,” Horn says, “every time someone tags the building, we get a fine from the city” — a problem exacerbated by the fact that the restaurant is a ripe target, sitting empty as it has been.

What Horn says he won’t compromise on, however, are the techniques he uses to make barbecue the way he believes it ought to be made: “If I just decided to start cooking with gas, we’d probably be open by now.”