A “food hall” restaurant space to be constructed on an undeveloped patch of land between the two office towers on Crown Pointe Parkway got the go-ahead from the Dunwoody Zoning Board of Appeals at its March 5 meeting. Up to four local concept restaurants could be built on the site, according to the developer.
Property owner KBS SOR LLC requested a variance to encroach up to 15 feet within the 50-foot street front setback to build an 8,000 square foot restaurant space between the 17- and 10-story office towers at 1040 and 1050 Crown Pointe Parkway.
The ZBA approved the variance with the condition to construct an 8-foot-wide sidewalk and 8-foot-wide landscape buffer with street trees along the Crown Pointe Parkway frontage as required in the Perimeter Center Overlay that seeks to create a more walkable Perimeter Center district.
Two surface parking lots will be added on site as well with a total of approximately 60 spaces. The city had tried to eliminate the parking lots because of the parking available in the existing parking decks for the office buildings but agreed to allow them after the developer submitted more robust streetscaping plans that include adding interior landscaping within the surface parking lots and perimeter landscaping around the parking lots. The city is open to reducing the parking at a future date in keeping with the Perimeter Center Overly, said Planner Ronnie Kurtz.
The commercial space will be owned by KBS SOR Crown Pointe, which will lease space to restaurant tenants.
Developer George Banks, who helped develop Krog Street Market, is working to find tenants for the site for KBS SOR Crown Pointe. He said this project is different than a traditional food hall concept because the restaurants will not be inside one building but instead have their own building space. He said he is hoping to sign four tenants to the site.
“This is more of a restaurant cluster” than a food hall like Krog Street Market, Banks said. He said is in discussion with several potential tenants hopes to make announcements of who they at a potential groundbreaking this summer. It would take about nine months to build out the site. There are no plans to locate franchise or chain restaurants at the site, he said.
“We want all local concepts,” Banks said. “All people we are negotiating with are all local, or regional. We want really nice, well conceived and well executed concepts … that are at price points appropriate for a business lunch or a weekend family dinner.
“Elevated street food is what we want,” he added.
Banks said the plan is to make the site a place for employees in Perimeter Center to be able to eat lunch or grab a cocktail after work, but to also appeal to all of Dunwoody and surrounding cities. “We think this will be a nice neighborhood spot for the greater Dunwoody area,” he said.
The ZBA also approved a 3,400 square foot expansion of the Primrose School in Dunwoody Village, a daycare and early education facility. The school is owned by MES Real Estate Holdings.
The school is currently located in an approximately 6,000 square foot building near the intersection of Nandina Lane and Mount Vernon Road. The new addition would eliminate most of the current playground space, so the property owner will add playground area along the south and west side of the new addition.
The ZBA approved a waiver to construct a 6-foot landscape strip and 12-foot sidewalk to keep the streetscape to remain as it is today due to the frontage being almost entirely an existing driveway that widens as it ends into Nandina Lane. A variance requiring at least 100 square feet of outdoor play area per child was also approved due to the limited greenspace adjacent to the new addition.
The ZBA did require Primrose School to dedicate right of way for future construction of a 6-foot-wide landscape strip and 12-foot-wide sidewalk along the Nandina Lane frontage as well as any easement needed should the city decide to build sidewalks and landscaping along Nandina Lane.
This story has been updated with information from the KBS SOR Crown Pointe developer.
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