FAYETTEVILLE -- Plans for a north Fayetteville restaurant and brewery may have hit a snag.
Jody Thornton, the owner of JJ's Grill, submitted plans for a nearly 12,000-square-foot building at the southwest corner of Van Asche Drive and Steele Boulevard last month.
Fayetteville Planning Commission
Also on Monday, planning commissioners approved several modifications for a Walmart Neighborhood Market that’s being built north of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, between Government and Hill avenues.
According to revised project designs, the development will feature gray and orange tones instead of the typical brown and beige seen at most Neighborhood Markets. The store will also feature an expanded grocery pickup area on the east side of the building.
Source: Staff report
According to designs by Core Architects of Rogers, the building would primarily house corporate offices for JJ's, which has six locations in Arkansas. A roughly 2,900-square-foot brewery space would produce beer for all six JJ's restaurants. According to project designs, the brewery would be attached to a seventh JJ's restaurant and a patio space featuring live music at least once per week during the summer months.
The land where the project, called JJ's Beer Garden & Brewing Co., is envisioned is part of the CMN Business Park, a more than 300-acre phased development near the Northwest Arkansas Mall where several large commercial businesses, including Target, Olive Garden, Malco Razorback Cinema and Academy Sports + Outdoors, have opened in the past 20 years.
When the CMN Business Park property was rezoned in 1995, developers met stiff resistance from neighbors in the Centerbrook Subdivision. The 51-lot subdivision is located west of the Shiloh Drive-Steele Boulevard intersection on the north side of the Fulbright Expressway. Most of the homes were built in the 1970s.
When the CMN Business Park was proposed, Centerbrook residents were concerned about traffic, noise and drainage problems that could come from nearby businesses.
As a result, the developers agreed to prohibit specific types of uses southwest of Van Asche and Steele. One of the prohibited uses was restaurants.
According to Jesse Fulcher, senior city planner, neighbors wanted to see more office-type businesses that wouldn't be open late at night.
"Protections were put in place because of the proximity of this neighborhood," Fulcher told members of the Planning Commission on Monday.
Several neighbors who spoke at Monday's meeting asked planning commissioners to keep the protections in place.
"My husband and I ... have lived (in the Centerbrook subdivision) for 37 years," Ollie Hollowell said Monday. "We would like to ask the Planning Commission to honor the bill of assurance of 1995 that prohibits restaurants in the subdivision boundary."
But not all neighbors opposed the project.
"I'm 100 percent for having a restaurant there," Marshall King said. "If noise is a concern, we live across the street from a hospital. Sirens blare every single day. We have a train track that comes through at either 2 or 4 a.m. and blows its horn every single morning."
"We live in the middle of noise," King added. "Having a restaurant there is not going to enter in anything additional that would cause a problem."
Asa Hutchinson III, an attorney representing Thornton, JJ's owner, questioned whether the 1995 bill of assurance actually restricts restaurant development on the corner of Van Asche and Steele.
According to him and an attorney for landowners MSB Properties and Nanchar Inc., the agreement only prohibited restaurants in a 400-foot strip along the north and east boundaries of the Centerbrook subdivision. The corner property doesn't actually border the neighborhood or lie in one of those strips.
City Attorney Kit Williams advised planning commissioners Monday they needed to assume planning staff's interpretation of the 1995 agreement was correct and vote solely on whether to adjust the agreement, removing the restriction on restaurants.
Ultimately, the commission voted, 6-2, to recommend the City Council modify the agreement.
Council members will likely take up the issue Oct. 20.
Even with a change to the agreement, however, Thornton will have to seek a separate permit from the city to host live music -- something planning staff and neighbors are unlikely to support.
Thornton said following Monday's meeting the live music would not be as frequent as other JJ's locations, where musicians typically perform six nights per week. At most, he estimated, there would be between 16 to 18 shows per year at the Van Asche-Steele restaurant.
"If it's going to kill the project, it's not the end of the world for us," Thornton said.
NW News on 09/29/2015