Leawood residents are protesting a proposal to convert the old Post Office at Ranch Mart Shopping Center into a barbecue restaurant.

In the past two months, 204 residents in the surrounding neighborhood have signed a petition to stop the restaurant from taking over the Post Office, which is within 50 feet of residential property. Neighbors’ concerns include the proposed restaurant’s hours, noise and the smell of barbecue smoke. They worry that the proposal is a sports bar because the restaurant will have a liquor license and TVs on an outdoor patio.

   ”We want Ranch Mart to succeed,” Becky Andrews said. “I spend thousands of dollars there a year on groceries and other things. I would love to see some other kind of business go there. The fact that we have to fight this is frustrating.”

The Leawood Planning Commission rejected the owners’ preliminary application Jan. 25, despite a recommendation from city staff to approve it with 27 stipulations. Upset neighbors plan to attend a City Council meeting Monday to speak out against the project.

Slab N’ Pickle managing partner Scott Omeara said he is working to alleviate residents’ concerns. He plans to move forward with the project, hoping to open his restaurant by early summer, he said.

“We were not expecting any kind of reactions like these,” Omeara said. “It’s just a great location in such a wonderful neighborhood. We want to start this thing off right.”

Omeara, a Kansas City native, said the project has been under way for the past year. The proposal includes 145 interior seats, a 53-seat outside dining patio with outdoor bar and three TVs, 140 parking places, a trash receptacle and a wood storage area.

The Slab N’ Pickle is intended to be a family oriented restaurant, not a sports bar, Omeara said. The TVs are for customers to enjoy while they wait for their orders and alcohol will be a small part of the business, he said.

“Nowadays you need to have alcohol in order to compete, but we’re estimating alcohol will be less than 10 percent of our total sales,” Omeara said. “We’ve modeled our restaurant after some of the very successful KC barbecue restaurants.”

The Post Office, which closed in September 2009, operated from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday. The Slab N’ Pickle’s proposed hours extend from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.

Christi Pitts, who moved into the neighborhood 18 years ago, is most concerned about the proposed outdoor patio and the noise it would bring, especially at night.

“My fence to their property line is about 50 feet so virtually if they had a backdoor patio I would basically be part of their party,” Pitts said.

City code stipulates that noise limits cannot exceed 60 decibels within residential areas. The residents rented a sound meter to test noise levels. On Jan. 30, the residents had a barbecue cookout 50 feet away from the residential property line to simulate an outdoor patio scenario. Ranch Mart neighbor Vicky Price said their party reached 70 decibels.

“And that’s only 15 of my neighbors who are not rowdy people, mostly homeowners in their 50s,” Price said. “It just shows how close it is and that there’s no way to block the sound.”

Omeara has hired a sound engineer to help with additional ways to deaden the sound.

“By the time it gets to the property line, it will be lower than a normal conversation,” Omeara said.

The neighbors also are concerned about heavy smoke and smells emanating from a barbecue restaurant.

With a combination of barbecue technologies, Omeara is confident that the smell of barbecue is one thing the residential areas don’t have to worry about, he said. Omeara is using a state of the art electrostatic precipitator in conjunction with a “smog hog,” a device used in welding manufacturing shops as well as restaurants to take particles out of the air.

“When the smoke escapes it’s a detriment because it’s not flavoring anything,” Omeara said. “There will be virtually no smoke escaping with our new system. We don’t want to do anything that will hurt the neighborhood.”

Sally Reicher, who has lived in her home for 34 years, remains skeptical.

“They say they have all the advanced equipment so you can’t smell it but I have never seen a barbecue you couldn’t smell from 50 feet away,” Reicher said. “If you go anywhere else in Johnson County, the barbecue is not this near to residential housing and for a good reason.”

The residents are determined to continue protesting Slab N’ Pickle and future restaurants. For the meantime, they are preparing for the City Council meeting Monday and the Planning Commission meeting Feb. 28.

“Until things are truly over, we are not going to stop talking about it and educating people about what’s going in that space and the problems it creates,” Andrews said.

Many of the Ranch Mart neighbors said they were worried about their property values because of the proposed restaurant’s close proximity to their homes.

“We just want to maintain a nice place to raise families,” Price said. “We want them to look at this from our side of the fence, and I hope that they will think about this and realize that’s not what a good neighbor does.”