Behind the old walls and below the well-trodden wooden floorboards of Tara Foods in downtown Kingston is a business that runs with as much modern precision as owner Rudi Mogl can employ.

Tara is a Princess Street mainstay, an anchor business that is forever busy.

And it takes constant attention to detail and logistics to move one and a half million pounds of bulk foods and specialty products in and out each year.

Mogl is upset that city plans to alter the sidewalk and parking configuration in front of Tara is threatening that fine balance.

Once reconstruction work is complete this summer, trucks will no longer be able to park directly outside the ornate front doors to make deliveries.

“It can’t be harder for me to receive products. The food business is a logistics process,” said Mogl. “It’s all money. The one who gets the stuff the easiest is the one who will be in business the longest.”

Two blocks of downtown businesses on Princess and three side streets are preparing for the $6.5-million second stage of what’s come to be known as the Big Dig.

Kingston’s below-ground sewer, water, phone and electrical connections will be replaced on Princess between King and Bagot streets, as well as for one block along King, Wellington and Bagot streets.

Mogl’s plea to the city powers that be is that his business, and the entire downtown economy, is as fragile as that hidden infrastructure.

“We have hundreds and hundreds of suppliers,” he said, showing files of business contacts neatly arranged in a basement cabinet. “I probably have over 750 addresses in it. Every product has a supplier. There’s 15 or more suppliers coming every day.”

Tara celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. When Mogl moved Tara from King Street to its current Princess Street location in 1997, he rebuilt the basement and created a new storage facility in the back precisely to get around the logistical problem of having no rear entrance.

All of the goods he sells must arrive by the front door.

For that reason, he’s been watching the Big Dig plans very closely.

So when he went to a meeting for merchants and city engineering staff last November what he saw came as a shock.

“The plans were all changed,” he said. “I said, ‘This is not going to work for me.’ ”

City planners have been trying to create a more pedestrian-friendly downtown which includes wide areas of sidewalk alternately referred to as “bulges” or “bump-outs.”

The final configuration Mogl saw has the widened section of sidewalk at the corner of Wellington and Princess extended down Princess toward Tara.

The bump-out in front of Tara, which makes loading and unloading so convenient now, is to be pushed further down the street.

That extra distance is what has Mogl so upset, setting off his battle of the bulge with city hall.

“They said to us, ‘go to the nearest bulge and bring the products up the street,’ ” said Mogl. “Some skids weigh 3,000 pounds.”

The city’s top engineer says they’re trying to accommodate Tara’s needs along with a host of other issues.

“One of the drivers is trying to create a streetscape that is pedestrian-friendly and offer road safety as well,” said Mark Van Buren.

Extending the bump-out from the Wellington corner, for example, means people getting out of their cars will be further away from vehicles turning left onto Princess Street.

Yet Van Buren also acknowledged that traffic-pedestrian encounters “has not been a concern that is immediate to us at that intersection.”

“It’s trying to achieve an appropriate balance,” he said. “If we surveyed each and every business, they would have issues unique to them. What we have impressed upon Mr. Mogl is we made some modifications to minimize the distance for product to get into the store.”

Those modifications are essentially a promise to not install a planter or other city amenities that would block the path of delivery people.

“The end result is a change in distance that is about 10 paces,” said Van Buren. “We recognize the importance of his store, but we think, on balance, that is a reasonable compromise.”

Mogl said the new layout will create more problems than it solves.

If trucks are delivering pallets too heavy to move those 10 paces up the Princess Street incline, they will have to stop further up the street, where they will block cars in the newly created parking spaces.

Pedestrians, he said, should not have to dodge 3,000-pound pallets on a public sidewalk.

Mogl has started a petition in his store to oppose the city plans and has been talking to other business owners on his block.

One of them, Bill Dalton of Vandervoort’s Hardware, agreed that Tara has unique problems that need consideration.

In the food business, said Dalton, “everything is heavy” and the shorter the distance products have to be moved the better for everyone.

Vandervoort’s has a rear delivery area so they don’t have to worry about loading and unloading on Princess Street.

Dalton is concerned that there can’t be a meeting of minds between “those of us on Princess Street and those who design it.”

“You talk about sustainability,” Dalton said. “You want to walk to a unique store and get good things. We have to look at his request and listen very carefully.”

A retired Queen’s University business professor and former member of the city’s economic development commission sees Mogl’s battle as a watershed moment in relations between downtown merchants and city hall.

Niche stores like Tara, said David Rutenberg, are vital to city cores and they’re also highly susceptible to issues of parking and accessibility.

He described Tara as not only a mainstay for locals but as a destination for people coming from all over the region and the United States.

“Given that tourism is critical to the future of Kingston, and tourists are attracted to the richness of downtown Kingston, it would be important for the city to support the niche retailers,” said Rutenberg.

Mogl said the city plan is good in that it maintains the same number of parking spaces for customers.

“But what I need even more than customers is supplies,” he said. “I can’t make it harder to take orders. To pull a heavy skid uphill takes two strong people.”

Van Buren said construction work will proceed as planned.

“We believed we’d reached a consensus agreement that could work. It is somewhat disappointing that we haven’t been able to get full buy-in from Mr. Mogl,” he said.

“I appreciate his business there. No one wants to see him suffer, but we’re balancing a whole lot of competing interests. Ten metres is not unreasonable.”

For Mogl, 15 years of balancing his business needs may have hit a tipping point.

“It just makes it much harder for me to operate. I have to consider if I can stay here or not,” he said.

“This store is an anchor on the block. You don’t want me to move.”

paul.schliesmann@sunmedia.ca