Chick-fil-A Proposed For Farmingville Shopping Center
Developers want to construct a new building to house a Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant in the Expressway Plaza Shopping Center in Farmingville on North Ocean Avenue. The shopping center, which formerly housed Kmart now a Burlington Coat Factory, already contains a number of commercial outlets including Starbucks, LA Fitness, TGI Fridays and some smaller retailers.
Representatives for the developer went before the Brookhaven Town Board on June 5th to ask for approval and special permits and variances for the restaurant construction with outdoor seating and drive-thrus. The Chick-fil-A would go on a pad site on an unused portion of the 38 acre parking lot.
The Chick-fil-A as proposed would need a relaxation of the requirement for landscaped area from 50 feet to 39.2 feet for the shopping center, something that was typical of other existing structures including the TGI Fridays building.
The Chick-fil-A itself would be a 4,776-square-foot building with two drive throughs with capacity for 14 cars each to queue up. The design of the site, according to the presentation given, is self-contained with no curb cuts on North Ocean Avenue giving the restaurant room to que within the pad spot. It was promised that traffic will not spill out into the parking lot or onto North Ocean Avenue, even if more cars were waiting in the queue.
The restaurant is also seeking outdoor seating.
The Chick-fil-A would be constructed in front of Burlington Coat Factory.
The developer is also looking for relaxation of the Town parking requirements by 1.8%. A required 1,642 parking in the lot would be reduced to 1,617.
The presenters pointed out that the site was over parked even back in the day when K-Mart was flourishing, with plenty of room for extra vehicles.
They developer is also seeking a relief on the requirement of natural area from 13.6% to 6.9%.
The Planning Board placed the matter on the decision calendar.
