The neighbors of half-filled and deteriorating Piedmont Shopping Center are happy with a plan to renovate the center -- as long as renovation doesn’t include a bar.
Several neighborhood associations really like plans to rejuvenate the 57-year-old shopping center near Cotner Boulevard and A Street, but they don't want the city to create a loophole to the rule banning off-sale liquor businesses within 100 feet of homes and schools.
Both the center's neighbors and association representatives made those concerns clear Monday afternoon at a public hearing on zoning changes requested by the new Piedmont Center owner and through more than a dozen emails to City Council members.
The Clinton Neighborhood Association is "very much in favor of any revitalization. We also support the idea of a sit-down restaurant. But we would want the 100-foot limit firmly upheld so as not to allow liquor stores and bars," said Russell Irwin, representing the neighborhood organization.
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A compromise with the developer seems to answer the concerns of both the neighbors and neighborhood groups.
It would allow a future restaurant where at least 60 percent of sales was from food. But the restaurant would be able to have wine tasting events in which bottles of wine were sold through an exception that allows up to 5 percent of the sales in off-sale alcohol.
However, the compromise will not allow a bar or off-sale liquor store in the shopping center, explained Councilman Jonathan Cook, who worked on the compromise.
That restaurant is what new shopping center owner Steve Glenn wants.
"We are very excited about this project … and the new restaurant. This is a restaurant that can serve alcohol, not a bar that can serve food," he said during Monday's public hearing.
The compromise language will become part of the zone change the council is expected to vote on during a meeting Nov. 18.
The City Council already has determined the shopping center meets the state's blighted and substandard definitions, so developer Glenn can use tax increment financing in the redevelopment.
That funding will require a redevelopment agreement with the city that spells out how TIF will be used and council approval of the agreement.