Michele’s Table, a quaint but much-adored French eatery located on 12th Ave. N, is owned and operated by the equally adored Michele La Haise-Bates. Michele’s Table celebrated their one-year anniversary since opening on August 9, 2023. Michele’s Table is the fourth to lease this suite. “I’m thinking fourth time’s the charm,” says La Haise-Bates when explaining the history of the space. Michele’s Table is lovingly described by La Haise-Bates herself as, “A very French flair with a lot of midwest twist. We’re expanding our menu all the time.” The Michele’s Table menu highlights many things such as a beer and wine selection, food menu and bakery goods.
La Haise-Bates has had quite the past with her cuisine in the Fargo area. “I had my own catering business, was part of the Red River Market for many years, and so I had a built-in clientele. So I thought between that and NDSU added, I would say, a nice dimension to prospective students, faculty and students themselves. It’s just been fun watching more and more students come in all the time,” she said about the growth of the restaurant in the past year. With this much optimism, however, there is a major problem that needs to be tackled. Parking.
The building housing Michele’s Table along with other businesses is directly backed up by NDSU’s T-lot, where only NDSU students holding a valid parking permit can park. Aside from this lot, each business on the strip has only a few individual parking spaces designated for customers to park, nowhere near enough to successfully house the growing number of customers visiting. This lack of parking leads to customers taking their business elsewhere for fear of parking in the wrong place or receiving a ticket.
“I’m kind of a francophile. I love food, love people and love the French culture, so what do you do? You open a restaurant. I knew coming in that parking was going to be my number one stressor,” states La Haise-Bates on the major challenge included in leasing this space. NDSU Parking has previously been contacted by other businesses residing on the strip; nonetheless, the problem remains unsolved. Each business in Building 1414 brings something to the table for the NDSU campus and community, but it is made difficult to access due to the lack of parking available for patrons of these businesses.
The frustration is felt not only by Michele and the other neighboring business owners but also by the paying customers themselves, who are trying to enjoy the services offered. “I don’t know where to park when I come to Michele’s Table because the students have a parking lot, they say don’t park in the Bison Nutrition parking lot, so I’m just wondering where I should park because I’m right beside here but I can’t park. We almost never come here because it’s hard to park,” shares Tara Thol, a patron of Michele’s Table equally as exasperated and annoyed by the parking situation at hand.
The frustration is growing and being shared by business owners, employees and customers alike, yet there has still been no solution in sight for this continued parking debacle.