Fire and mechanical code violations have caused the temporary closure of Chili’s Grill and Bar in Marketplace.

Fire Marshal Mike McIntosh that the code violations have been an ongoing issue for the last six to 12 months and that city officials have been working with the restaurant to get the issues addressed.

McIntosh said the city was close to shutting the restaurant down this summer and issued 15-day compliance letters and restaurant representatives went before the city attorney’s office and Municipal Court and were able to comply with the code at the time.

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He said that Great Falls Fire Rescue’s fire prevention bureau recently received an anonymous complaint about the restaurant’s code violations and GFFR followed up and found that the violations were again occurring.

McIntosh said he and the city’s mechanical inspector, who is also the building official, inspected the restaurant and found numerous fire and mechanical code violations.

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They gave the restaurant a short time to comply and the restaurant was unable to do to.

“We felt it best to shut them down until they could get it corrected,” he said.

The city issued the closure notice on March 9.

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McIntosh said he worked closely with the mechanical inspector since many of those systems and codes are tied together.

He said that one of the issues at Chili’s was the hood system, which comes with a fire suppression system and is also tied to the mechanical systems because when activated, it shuts down the air handling system for the business.

McIntosh said that system was not functioning properly among other violations.

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He said that he’s been in touch with people who own the restaurant and they are working to get the equipment to repair the system and correct the other violations to be able to reopen the restaurant.

It’s not common for the city to shut down a business due to code violations and the last one in recent memory was the Agri-Village at 4800 10th Ave. S. The city shut it down in 2017 for fire and building code violations. It has since been repurposed into a U-Haul facility.

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“That’s the last thing in the world that we want to do is close a business down,” McIntosh said. “We did everything in our power to work with the local folks to get it done and we weren’t able to get it to the point that they were able to get everything corrected.”

McIntosh said the recently adopted changes to the fire code that allow the city to fine for repeated failure to correct fire code deficiencies found during safety inspections are not a factor in this case. He said that the city attorney’s office said that no fines would be assessed since the city shut down the restaurant until the violations could be corrected.