Chick-Fil-A is trying to come to Bellingham, proposes a restaurant in this busy area
Chick-Fil-A may be making its way to Bellingham.
The city of Bellingham received a pre-application filed May 12 from “Steve Schwartz, Chick-Fil-A Inc.” The application is proposing a 5,028-square-feet restaurant with a dual-lane drive-thru at 4030 Cordata Parkway, now a vacant parking lot.
This would be the first Chick-Fil-A restaurant in Bellingham and Whatcom County.
The Atlanta-based company has 2,600 restaurants in 47 states and is the largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the world, according to the company’s website. Many are franchise-owned.
The restaurant will accommodate 46 cars in the drive thru, 74 interior seats and 48 exterior seats, according to the pre-application obtained from the city of Bellingham public database, eTRAKit.
The proposed hours of operation for Chick-Fil-A are 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and closed on Sundays.
The pre-application also asks whether an indoor playground and 24-hour drive-thru would be permitted, and includes blueprint plans for the building, exterior design and parking lot and drive thru.
But the proposed restaurant has many hoops to jump through before it can open its doors, and it is not clear how long it will take before a restaurant can be built and opened.
On Tuesday, May 30, the applicants had a pre-application meeting that “represents an opportunity for the applicant’s team to speak with a multidisciplinary team of City staff to go over a range of potential questions, which can include information about the subject property, the applicable code sections, the permitting process, fee schedules, etc.,” Blake Lyon, director of planning and community development for the city of Bellingham wrote in an email to The Bellingham Herald.
“The purpose of the meeting is to help all parties understand whether or not there is a potentially viable project before a formal land use application is submitted and potentially before a lease or purchase agreement is signed for the property,” Lyon wrote.
If the development continues after the meeting, Chick-Fil-A would then need to conduct a neighborhood meeting, followed by applying for multiple applications: a planned development permit, commercial design review, critical area permit, and an environmental review, according to Lyon.
If these applications were approved, Chick-Fil-A would then need to submit construction documents to the city to review and approve.
“The timing of these applications and permit review can depend largely on the range of complex and technical issues, the number of review cycles, etc. and the construction timeline can also vary depending on potential external influences such as materials availability, labor markets, etc.,” Lyon wrote.
This story was originally published May 31, 2023 at 10:46 AM.
