New drive-through restaurant planned for Inverness Corners
The Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday night approved plans to subdivide a small piece of the Inverness Corners shopping center to make way for a drive-through restaurant.
The property owner, Branch Inverness Associates, did not disclose the name of the restaurant to the city, but plans submitted to the city show the restaurant would be built on a .8-acre parcel in the Inverness Corners parking lot, just off Valleydale Road.
The plan is to break that parcel off a current 9.35-acre parcel and build a 6,000-square-foot building, Assistant City Engineer Chris Reeves said.
There would be no direct access to Valleydale Road, City Engineer Rodney Long said. Instead, drivers would use existing entrances into the Inverness Corners shopping center, Long said.
The additional building is made possible due to changes in the city of Hoover’s parking requirements that lessened the amount of parking required for shopping centers, City Planner Mac Martin said.
In the past, developers had to provide five parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of buildings, Martin said. Now, the requirement is 4.5 parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of buildings, he said.
This change was made because so many developments were finding they really didn’t need as much parking as was required, and large areas in parking lots remained unused.
The Hoover zoning board on Monday approved a similar request in the Hoover Court shopping center off U.S. 31
The request is to divide 6 acres in the Hoover Court shopping center into a 5.4-acre parcel and a .62-acre parcel. The purpose is to allow for the construction of an LAH real estate office on .62 acres in the Hoover Court parking lot, along Braddock Drive.
The zoning board on Monday also recommended the Hoover City Council change the zoning for a controversial 273-acre group of properties along Interstate 459. The land stretches along I-459 between the Patton Creek shopping center and Preserve Parkway.
About 253 of the acres are now zoned for commercial use, while 20 acres are zoned for single-family residential use, but the land was rezoned against the property owners’ wishes in 2016, and two of the property owners filed a federal lawsuit last year.
Now, the property owners have asked the city to put the property in a planned development district, which essentially is a holding zone until more specific plans can be developed and submitted to the city for approval. Read more about that case here.
In other business, the zoning board:
- Approved final plans for 38 residential lots in phase two of the Blackridge subdivision at the end of Stadium Trace Parkway.
- Recommended the City Council allow The Crafters House at 3417 Old Columbiana Road to offer craft classes with accessory beer and wine sales. Classes allowed would include woodworking, ceramics, jewelry art, painting, paper arts and needle arts. Classes not allowed would include welding, commercial screen printing, and building, staining or painting furniture, except for a two-hour class for repurposing furniture once a month on Saturdays.
- Recommended the City Council allow The Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles at 424 Emery Drive to open a weekday nursery for infants ages 6 weeks to 12 months, with a maximum of eight children at any time. City approval is required because the property is zoned for planned office use.
- Recommended the City Council rezone two recently annexed houses at 2869 Georgetown Drive and 1856 Buttercup Drive from Jefferson County R-1 residential zoning to Hoover R-1 single-family residential zoning.
Editors note: A change was made from "planned residential district" to "planned development district" at 5:10 p.m.