The Great Plate Bar & Grill’s second-floor venue was shut down by code enforcement June 28, though the ground-floor restaurant remains open for business.

The vacate order presented by code enforcement officers Ana Contreras and Jim Decker said that the second floor of the restaurant was being used as a night club, which is not a permitted use.

They also wrote that the second floor was too dangerous to occupy and violated California building, fire and electrical codes and the uniform code for the abatement of dangerous buildings.

Though only the second floor was closed and the main grill and bar remains open, one longtime patron said that during the past several months, the entire restaurant was transformed into Club Remix on Friday and Saturday nights, with cover charges from $5 to $10 per person.

On Friday, June 29, Contreras and Tracy police checked The Great Plate and found that the business was violating the order to vacate the second story. The business officials were cited and the nightclub activities were stopped, which included music, a laser light show and fog machines.

City officials are working on a code amendment to govern nightclub businesses, Contreras said, but until one is created, all nightclubs are considered in violation of city code.

Speaking for The Great Plate this week, Dale Cose said he met with owners Jacobo Gallegos and Antonio Andrade Rodriguez and city officials to try to find a solution. Gallegos and Rodriguez took control of the Great Plate in January from Brandon and Shawn Perry.

“The city has its position, and I understand it,” Cose said. “I told the owners they need to sit down with the previous owner and decide who is going to do what to resolve the code enforcement issues. They understand it — they don’t have an issue with that. Sometime these things become a money and timing issue. Not that they don’t want to comply.”

What sparked the June 28 walkthrough by code enforcement was a request by the business owners for a conditional use permit, Contreras said. She said city officials researched the business and found that several building permits had expired without an inspection by a building official.

“The work involved some health and safety issues, so we went out to do an additional inspection to follow up, and at that time we found not only prior violations existed, there were additional violations,” she said.

The June 28 order listed dozens of violations, including safety hazards both upstairs and downstairs, required repairs or upgrades that had not been completed, and makeshift electrical setups using extension cords and other temporary fixes.

Great Plate restaurant manager Mike Corbett said the business was willing to do whatever the city allowed once a municipal code was established. He said the closure of the second floor was temporary and the owners would soon authorize a construction company to complete the work.