A new Chick-fil-A restaurant is planned at Buckhead Place shopping center at the busy intersection of Peachtree and Piedmont roads.
Coro Realty, owner of Buckhead Place, wants to build the nearly 6,000 square-foot restaurant at 3234 Peachtree Road, where a shuttered David’s Bridal store now stands. The bridal company filed for bankruptcy in April.
The fast-food restaurant would include 58 parking spaces. It would not include a drive-through due to zoning restrictions. Buckhead Place is located in Special Public Interest District 9 (SPI-9), which encompasses much of the North Atlanta neighborhood’s commercial area.
“Drive-throughs are not allowed in this district and the reasoning is that we’re trying to create a walkable district,” said Denise Starling, executive director of Livable Buckhead, during the July 5 meeting of the SPI-9 Development Review Committee.
“When you have drive-throughs that’s just more encouraging car activity,” she said.
The Chick-fil-A is planned as part of an updated master plan for Buckhead Place, located across from the Terminus mixed-use project on Piedmont Road. Buckhead Place is anchored by an LA Fitness, Marshalls, apartment building 05 Buckhead and two hotels, Hampton Place and Hyatt Place. It is also filled with vast parking lots.
The current master plan for Buckhead Place includes 399,000 square feet of commercial use where the 6,000-square-foot Chick-fil-A would be built. Coro Realty is asking the city to approve redistributing the remaining 393,000 square feet commercial space to elsewhere on the site, said attorney Laurel David of the Galloway Group.
“That’s really just a more of a placeholder,” David said. “There are no plans to develop that square footage right now or in the near future. Right now, we’re just focused on the Chick-fil-A.”
Coro Realty is asking for a variation to keep the sidewalks added last year to this area as part the Peachtree Road Complete Street project, according to documents filed with the city.
Cars would enter and exit the restaurant via a small road off Peachtree Road between it and a small, low-rise office building including a Hertz and Mattress Factory.
The DRC, an advisory committee to the city planning department, raised concerns about safe pedestrian access to the restaurant from the parking lot because no clear paths are included in the site plan. The committee also asked that bike racks be included.
The project includes razing the David’s Bridal building and the longstanding Maple trees in its parking lot. DRC members asked Chick-fil-A to consider planting trees larger than the required 3-inch caliper to replace the Maple trees.