Pizza Hut to resume deliveries

An agreement is reached with the company that means Union Academy will once again get nighttime deliveries by Nov. 1.

By KELLEY BENHAM
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 6, 2002

TARPON SPRINGS -- Late-night Pizza Hut deliveries will return to Union Academy by Nov. 1, ending months of negotiation between the city and the Dallas chain.

"They are wanting to go forward and deliver pizza," Mayor Frank DiDonato said.

The decision spares Pizza Hut's local business license, which the city had threatened to revoke.

It doesn't quite settle the controversy about whether the company can justify almost a year of limited delivery. Night deliveries stopped after a Pizza Hut driver was robbed in November by three teenagers, one of whom fired a gun into the air.

The company said it had safety concerns; some residents said the policy had more to do with race. But the company no longer has to worry about that.

"I have other battles," said Pizza Hut vice president Robert Millen, who flew to Tarpon Springs with the corporation's head of security last week for meetings with DiDonato, City Commissioner David Archie and police officials.

Pizza Hut has nondelivery areas all over the country, he said, and is only occasionally challenged. He explained the reasons for the policy in detail to city officials, he said. But he wasn't willing to explain them to the public.

He would only say that the company looked at national crime statistics in declaring the area unsafe.

"There's a lot of attorney-client privilege," he said.

Archie still is not convinced the policy was purely based on safety concerns, he said. But he is willing to drop the issue.

"I think perception was as much the cause as anything," said Archie, who lives in Union Academy and says the pizza controversy hasn't done its reputation any good. The neighborhood is safe, he said, and its people have always deserved better than to be stigmatized by the actions of a few.

After the city put pressure on the pizza chain beginning in August, Pizza Hut took a second look at the neighborhood and dispatched its security head to investigate.

Pizza Hut's decision comes about a month after a Domino's Pizza owner decided to resume delivery to a single Tarpon Springs street that he had not served for seven years. After returning to Mango Circle for a look around, John Paulette said he found a different neighborhood than the one that once scared him off.

At last week's meetings, the city agreed to provide police to help teach safety techniques to delivery drivers and to work with the company on police presence, lighting, street numbering and other issues.

As soon as the new security measures are in place, sometime before Nov. 1, late-night delivery will resume, Millen said.

Archie hopes his wife and neighbors will be able to call for a pizza long before Nov. 1, but he says he can be patient a few more weeks, and then move on.

"Everyone wanted to put this behind us," Archie said. "We have more pressing issues in the city than whether somebody gets a pizza."

-- Kelley Benham can be reached at (727) 445-4182 or benham@sptimes.com.

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