Lake County Gazette

The village board of Vernon Hills reconsiders some zoning requirements for the local Chik-fil-A restaurant.

"I did speak with the owner of this particular store just prior to the planning zoning hearing, and she was desperate to have this operational improvement," Director of Community Development Andrew Jennings said. "The idea of having this door open up and allow the staff of the store to walk out to the drive-thru area, take the orders, take payment is totally different than the way that they operate right now. So they're looking for the total efficiency package to try to move people through faster. Since we do have her contact information, I could easily speak with her if the consensus of the committee is to have two [waiting spaces]. I can we could prepare an ordinance with that in it. I can speak to her about what that means. If she has any objection, we would have to bring it back as a new business or businesses instead of putting it on omnibus. So that is something that I could prepare and speak with her about in advance of any vote." 

The Chik-fil-A restaurant in Vernon Hills at 701 Milwaukee Avenue requested a zoning variation from the village board for their setback requirements. This would allow them to change the canopies over the front and sides of the building as well as the canopy over their drive-thru areas. This would also allow them to fully implement a true double drive-thru. The restaurant has been operating with a makeshift double drive-thru for some time now, utilizing part of their parking lot and some cones, however, it is not a true double lane and could use some expansions to better accommodate customers and allow for better traffic flow. 

Director of Community Development, Andrew Jennings, explained that the business might also change its order window to a sliding door so that employees could come out to facilitate quicker order taking and delivery to speed up the process. He told the board that the planning and zoning board had reviewed the whole request and was fine with it all, provided some of the lighting of the canopy was reviewed further to ensure the LED lighting would not be too much. 

Allen Wiley, a project engineer from GBC designs was at the meeting as a representative to answer any questions from the council. The council did question the lack of expansion of the outflow, which was still at a single lane. They also asked if the business planned on adding car spaces for certain larger orders to pull out and wait so that customers would not get stuck behind anyone, and Wiley did not know any policy regarding that but thought that the employees were using certain spaces for that. The council amended the request to bring it back to the business before approval.