Among the items being tossed from the Planning Commission to the Decatur City Commission on Monday night is the request for exemptions to the city’s Special Pedestrian Area by Redstone Investments, the owner of 315 West Ponce de Leon Ave, to build out an I Love Juice Bar drive-thru in place of the Wells Fargo drive-thru on the building’s eastern elevation.
Last week, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended denial of the request after numerous residents spoke out in opposition to the plan to retain the existing drive-thru and add additional parking to the site.
The plan requires an exemption since drive-thrus and streetside parking are not allowed in the city’s Special Pedestrian Areas. As you can see from this map, Ponce Place is included in this area up to its intersection with Montgomery Street.
The Decatur City Commission will have the final say tomorrow night.
Juice Bar rendering courtesy of meeting materials.
I noticed the old Terra Mater salon space has a coming soon sign for a juice bar – can two juice bars make it on the same block?
This would make THREE juice bars within a block, more or less – Kale Me Crazy in Terra Mater’s old spot and Smoothie King in the Chocolate Bar’s old spot are both already set, as far as I know. Plus Starbucks is now offering fruit/veggie smoothies…plus Souper Jenny has juices….take a short drive and YDFM has juice….Arden’s Garden, across from Publix, has juice…
You know when you look at a word too long and it loses its meaning? JUICE JUICE JUICE.
Do they realize this is Decatur not the suburbs or a busy road near a highway? We don’t more cars on ponce. If you want a juice, get out of your car And walk. It’s the least you can do to counter the calories. Hopefully the commissioners will follow the guidance of the planning commission and deny this.
Plus I’ll save them some time, Kale Me Crazy juice bar is opening across the street; I doubt they can both survive.
It’s weird how two things at once show up around here. Two juice bars. Three yogurt stores, one of which morphed into a second ice cream store. I will studiously avoid the juice bar with the drive through, though. That is just silly.
Now, a grocery store with a drive through….
Three. Smoothie King is supposed to be coming to the old Chocolate Bar space at The Artisan as well.
I thought juice bars only existed in fictitional tweens’ shows to provide an alcohol-free place for the characters to hang out n’ stuff.
And likely that will be the fate of these 🙂
At the Planning Commission meeting, the guy representing the juice bar said their business plan doesn’t work without a drive thru.
He expects a large segment of his customer base will want the convenience of the drive up window service to get their healthy drinks . He mentioned people running late for work and parents with kids in the car. Said this was a perfect fit for the Decatur healthy, active lifestyle.
Has he not been told that the commenters on DM have figured out that his model won’t work in Decatur according to them?
Would he be willing to turn it into a Trader Joe’s with a drive through? I think that is something the people could get behind.
I guess he has been told ………..
The juice bar item has been pulled from the Monday night City Commission agenda.
Sounds like the person wanted a competitive advantage over the other 3 (?) juice bars without a drive-thru, and was hoping the City would give him one via an exception to the zoning code. Glad this didn’t go anywhere.
Competitive advantage? That assumes Decaturites would choose to use a drive-thru, as opposed to walking and biking. The ease of finding a parking spot at Dancing Goats, for example, is proof that walkers far out number drivers . . . oh, wait a minute.
To be fair, I’d say the scarcity of parking at Dancing Goats, more than anything, is proof that a solid yoga studio in a market of lesser options pulls from a wide geographic area.
I see plenty of people walking to Dancing Goats. The scarcity of parking sure doesn’t lead to an abundance of empty seats.
My point exactly. The scarcity of parking at DG has less to do with DG and the type of customers they’re attracting who, as you mention, arrive on foot and by bike a lot. It has to do primarily with the yoga studio. DEM’s comment seemed to suggest that the DG lot was full because all their customers were drive-ins. I believe that to be a misread of the evidence.
I did not say or intend to suggest that ALL of the DG customers are drive-ins. Just that an awful lot of them are drive-ins, and that the lot is pretty much always full.
DG customers aren’t the only ones who use that lot. It also serves the yoga studio, the salon, the engineering firm, and whatever other businesses are in that building next door. (There are just a handful of spaces available on Northern Ave.) I’ve seen the lot full when DG wasn’t.
I’m sure lots of non-downtown Decatur residents would choose to use a Dancing Goats drive-thru. Thank goodness there isn’t one.
Glad they said no to the drive through. I do find it interesting that we are so perplexed by similar businesses in one area. In many countries you walk down one street and it will be all carpet stores, or all car repair. I’m not sure of the economic forces, but I think it isn’t all bad to have duplicative clusters. I find it odd that Oakhurst Market told me they don’t sell coffee because they have Kavarna across the street. To me a robust market zone would have multiple outlets for everyday items like coffee… Now of course Juice might be another story.
The Planning Commission said no to the whole proposal . It was not a specific denial of a drive thru for this location.
Downtown Development Authority had earlier recommended approval of the proposal.
City Commissioners get the final word on this if it comes before them at a future meeting.