A community meeting Jan. 11 about plans for a new Chick-fil-A in North Jacksonville along Duval Station Road east of the North Creek subdivision north of First Coast High School ended with Council member Reggie Gaffney Jr. saying he will seek to defer an upcoming Planning Commission meeting on the project to allow area residents to organize to speak out against the project.
More than 100 residents turned out at the Oceanway Community Center, where dozens spoke in opposition, saying the new restaurant would create additional traffic congestion, reduce property values of nearby homes and threaten the safety of students at First Coast High.
The developer is seeking to rezone the site to accommodate the needs of Chick-fil-A, and legislation for the rezoning, Ordinance 2023-0856, was filed in mid-December and has started making its way through the City Council legislative process. It is scheduled to go before the Planning Commission Jan. 18.
Access to the restaurant is from Lady Lake Drive. Customers arriving by car would enter via the North Creek subdivision entrance on Bradley Cove Road or through the neighboring Publix Super Market shopping center parking lot. There are several homes within a few hundred feet of the proposed Chick-fil-A.
The meeting was attended by a panel comprising Ramzy Bakkar of the Bakkar Group, who owns the property though the RBSSSS LLC; Jennifer Santelli, principal development lead with Chick-fil-A corporate in Atlanta; Chris LeDew, city traffic engineering chief; Caroline Fulton, a city planner; and Thomas Ingram, an attorney for Bakkar.
Santelli said the chain understands it has busy restaurants and is trying to reduce the load on those. There is a Chick-fil-A about 3 miles away in River City Marketplace.
“The intent of this location is to have some capacity release so that it functions better and more efficiently than those other locations do, it’s not, it’s not meant to be a destination,” she said. “It’s capturing traffic that is already on the street.”
The North Creek site was approved for a fast food restaurant in 2015, a McDonald's, that was never built. It included an entrance from Duval Station Road and Bradley Cove Drive with less parking spaces and a smaller drive-thru.
Bakkar said the McDonald's site plan is no longer effective because of changing habits after the coronavirus pandemic. “We use the drive-thrus more than ever now,” he said.
Bakkar said the McDonald's drive-thru was approved for 14 vehicles and the proposed Chick-fil-A plan would accommodate 34 vehicles.
He said the expanded parking would “keep everyone safe and contained on the property.”
“We can build the Chick-fil-A in two ways. One that has already been approved by the City Council and it brings with it safety and traffic concerns. Or we can go into a new site plan that will hand almost double the number of customers, which keeps them out as a surroundings streets,” Bakkar said.
A resident asked the panel if Chick-fil-A would proceed with the 2015 plan if the zoning change is rejected.
“As far as Chick-fil-A goes, they’re not prepared to say yes or no if they would go forward,” Ingram said.
Near the end of the meeting, a resident asked Bakkar if he would consider putting some small businesses at the site instead of the restaurant.
“How do we get you, to do that for us,” the resident asked.
“No, I understand,” Bakkar said. “I gotta think about it.”
Santelli said Chick-fil-A wants to be good neighbors.
“We need to take your comments back and figure out what we are going to do with that,” she said. “This is serious. We’re not here to make money. We’re not here to run you over.”
After the meeting, Santelli said she had no comment.
This is the second community meeting about plans for a Chick-fil-A at the site.
In 2023, Folks Huxford, who at the time was chief of current planning for the city, told the meeting that the Planning Department would recommend denying the rezoning request. Huxford has since left the city and is now director of community development for Baker County.
At the meeting Jan. 11, city planner Caroline Fulton said the city would issue a recommendation Jan. 12. She did not say what it would be.
“It might be denial, but we don’t know,” Gaffney said after the meeting. “So it might be denial and then, you know, this might be irrelevant, right?”
Editor's Note: Daily Record Managing Editor Monty Zickuhr is a resident of the North Creek subdivision.