You may already be following the story of the Capital City Diner, a new restaurant planned by Trinidad resident Matt Ashburn (City Paper wrote about it yesterday). Ashburn and his partner, Patrick Carl, bought a Silk City Diner, one of those original 1940s era sleek modular diner buildings, in upstate New York and planned to install it on the site of one of the former used car lots shut recently shut down by Mayor Fenty. Great idea, right? We were definitely intrigued by the news, and had already set up a time for a photographer to go down there this weekend to check the place out.

The actual installation of the building was planned for today, but when the diner arrived at 1050 Bladensburg Rd. NE around 10:30 a.m. this morning, Ashburn Tweeted that an inspector from the D.C. Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs forbade them to move the building onto its concrete foundation. There’s actually a pretty interesting Twitter exchange between Ashburn and @dcra regarding the stop work order.

“@dcra Please help.”

“@dcra We followed guidance given by DCRA reps.”

“Not exactly @capcitydiner. We ‘re trying to work with you and help walk you through this. You need to do it right though.”

“@capcitydiner We’re coming to you right now. Check your email as well.”

And so on. For most of the day, Ashburn was then forced to leave the diner itself in the middle of Bladensburg Rd., prompting him to later update that “city is giving us a parking ticket.”

But DCist just got off the phone with Ashburn, who lamented that it’s “a long story” that he didn’t have time to tell right now, but confirmed that just as the evening rush hour was starting, he had finally received permission to move the diner out of the road and onto the foundation property. He estimated the move would begin around 5:30 p.m.

We’ve got a call in to DCRA to find out more of the details on what went wrong with Capital City Diner’s inspection process, and will update when we hear back. MORE: DCRA spokesperson Mike Rupert explained the diner saga to us, and clarified that the diner has actually been OK’d to move not onto its foundation, but onto a set of wooden blocks on the property. The department still needs to approve the attachment plans for the foundation before the building can be placed on its intended spot.

So what happened? It sounds like Ashburn and Carl got a raw deal from a shady architect. The foundation was not poured correctly according to city code – there wasn’t enough concrete and it hadn’t set for long enough. And when the architect was contacted today to provide certification from the project engineer, Rupert says the guy faxed over what turned out to be a forged signature. The engineer himself did show up to the site to go over his work with DCRA, but Rupert said the architect, who is not licensed in the District, appears to have “railroaded” the Cap City Diner guys.

The temporary solution to place the diner on the property will have to do until the whole thing can get sorted out, Rupert said, which is a shame, because he’s all for the project.

“This is exactly the type of thing we were hoping to promote” when the city shut down those shady used car dealerships, Rupert said.