Plans to enlarge the dining room at Morena’s Taqueria received approval of the Ceres Planning Commission on Monday evening.

Salvador and Marisela Mendoza want to expand their eatery at the southeast corner of Mitchell Road and Whitmore Avenue by 636 square feet. The plan is to add more space on the north side of the building. The added room includes a 24-seat banquet room and a dry storage area.

The existing restaurant is 2,991 square feet with a 500 square foot patio. The total proposed building size with the patio is 4,127 square feet. The existing parcel is 0.53-acre and there is no proposal to change the size of the parcel.

Senior Planner Tedde Hernandez said two parking spaces will be sacrificed to the expansion, leaving 36 parking stalls when code requires a minimum of 27 spaces.

The Mitchell Road Corridor Specific Plan has a limit for the overall area of a building in relation to the area of the site. This ratio is called the Floor Area Ratio (FAR). The maximum FAR for single-story buildings is 0.55 and the proposed FAR is less at 0.18. Therefore, the project meets the overall building area requirement.

“I think it’s great to see,” said Planning Commission Chairman Bob Kachel. “This has been a problematic, I guess, piece of property with restaurants coming and going for decades. It’s great to see somebody’s doing well there to the point where they need to expand. Particularly in this day and age of restaurants having difficulty, it’s a good sign for this business. Great to see it happening.”