Mountain Brook council allows Chester's test kitchen in English Village

The Mountain Brook city council, on Monday, May 22, voted 3-2 to grant a conditional use zoning request allowing local firm Chester’s International to locate a test kitchen in the former Café Iz space at 2003 Cahaba Road in English Village -- an area which has Local Business District zoning meant to encourage retail.

However, the council granted the conditional use to Chester’s with a catch.

Four years after the beginning of the lease on Feb.1, 2017 – or sooner if the facility closes for some reason -- the council will have the power, if it desires, to revoke the conditional use and declare that the space should again be used for retail.

Property owner Shirley Kahn, who will lease the space to Chester’s, said at the pre-council meeting that Chester’s CEO Ted Giles was willing to accept such terms in order to open the facility.

Council President Virginia Smith and council members Alice Womack and Lloyd Shelton voted to grant the conditional use, given the four-year time restriction, which is meant to give the council a chance to study the project's impact on the village.

Council President Pro Tem Bill Pritchard and councilor Phillip Black voted against it.

Chester’s – which operates three chains of franchise restaurants – already has its corporate headquarters nearby, at 2020 Cahaba Road.

According to a written description of the new facility supplied by Giles, it would be called a “Culinary Innovation Center” and will be used as a testing kitchen showroom, corporate event and meeting space and as a showroom for potential franchisees.

Kahn said that the new facility would draw corporate visitors to the area, increase tax revenue and require no new parking – since the current Chester’s offices have their own parking.

“I think Chester’s will bring an added value to the village,” Kahn said.

Mayor Stewart Welch and virtually all of the council members, in the pre-council meeting, said they would prefer that the prominent location –Welch called it the village’s “marquee” or “billboard space” – ideally to be used for retail.

However, Smith and Womack expressed a desire to give Giles a chance to try out the facility and study its impact.

“I’d like to try to make something work,” Womack said.

Pritchard, however, said that the location is a “strategic” one and that it “needs to have a retail use, not an office space.”

Philips argued that the council was looking at a “four-year fix” to fill a vacant space, rather than taking a “long-term view” of the needs and vibrancy of the city’s villages.

Cahaba Village

As part of its consent agenda, the council referred another request for a zoning change back to the city’s planning commission.

Developer David Silverstein had requested that the city allow him to lease a vacant space at Cahaba Village to an American Family Care medical clinic – a use not currently permitted in the zoning for that facility, considered a Local Business District.

Most of the council members – with the exception of Pritchard – felt that the AFC facility would be acceptable at the development, which is anchored by a Whole Foods, located along busy Highway 280 and is different in character than the city’s other, older villages.

“I think it’s an appropriate location for a clinic of this sort,” Smith said, who noted that parking seems to be adequate.

The commission will be asked to find a way to amend the zoning ordinance to allow such medical clinics in mixed-use areas outside the city’s traditional villages.

The consent agenda passed 4-1, with Pritchard the lone no vole, due to his opposition to the zoning amendment.

Consent agenda

Among other items on the consent agenda, the council voted to provide funding for the improvement of some athletic fields in the city.

The city will pay -- on behalf of the Mountain Brook Board of Education --$168,699 for improvements to the Mountain Brook Junior High School community athletic field with the condition that the board will reimburse the city in the amount of $56,232, that Mountain Brook Athletics will reimburse the city in the amount of $28,117 and that Mountain Brook Lacrosse will pay the city back $28,117.

The city will also pay -- on behalf of the Mountain Brook Board of Education – about $794,000 for improvements to the high school baseball field under the condition that Mountain Brook Athletics will reimburse the city up to a total of $210,000 payable over six years and that Mountain Brook Sports Corporation will reimburse the city up to a total of $275,000 in six installments.

CORRECTION: 5-23-17 1:45 P.M.: Cahaba Village was previously referred to, incorrectly, as Cahaba Heights Village.