It’s been nearly a year since the closing of the longstanding O’Charley’s restaurant on Sandy Plains Road at Shallowford Road.
Recently the Whataburger fast food chain filed plans with the Cobb Zoning Office to replace the nearly 7,000-square foot restaurant building and construct a new facility on the same site.
It would be the fifth Whataburger location in Cobb County, but a site plan amendment is needed to do so.
According to the preliminary files (you can read them here), there are a number of stipulations dictating future land use for the 1.31-acre parcel.
Among them are restrictions against a fast-food restaurant and anything with a drive-through service. The Whataburger site plan, drawn up by a Cumming-based architect, calls for a double-lane drive-through fronting Sandy Plains Road.
Those were among the stipulations included in a 1998 pending litigation settlement between Cobb County and Sembler Family Partnership, a retail developer, over a rezoning case that permitted the O’Charley’s.
The land once belonged to the prominent Gordy’s family (of Varsity restaurant fame) that owned many parcels in the area, and is part of a larger retail center currently anchored by a Target store.
Cobb property tax records indicate that the land, owned by the 1987 Donig Living Trust Nov 23 87, sold for $2.575 million in 2004 and has an an appraised value of nearly $2 million.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners is scheduled to hear the request on May 21, and the zoning staff has not yet issued a full analysis or a recommendation.
Rezoning isn’t needed because the community retail commercial (CRC) designation includes restaurants.
Whataburger, which started in Texas in 1950, has nearly 1,000 restaurants, mostly in Texas and the South.
There are three open in Cobb: On Cobb Parkway near Akers Mill Road, on Barrett Parkway near I-75 and at Chastain Road and George Busbee Parkway. Another is planned for the Acworth area.
There’s also a Whataburger on Highway 92 in Woodstock near I-575.
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- East Cobb civic leader named to Planning Commission
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