Green light for new Big Kahuna
Big Kahuna Wings Restaurant has received the green light on its site plan for a new restaurant building, which will be located at 12802 Kingston Pike, right beside Renaissance | Farragut.
Farragut Municipal Planning Commission approved the site plan, presented by BKW Restaurant owner Matthew Beeler, engineer Mark Bialik and R. Knick Myers with Myers Bros. Holdings, which owns Renaissance | Farragut, at its meeting Thursday, Feb. 15.
Planning Commissioner Noah Myers, who operates Myers Bros. Holdings with brother, Knick Myers, recused himself from the discussion and vote.
Since BKW opened the Farragut restaurant in 2014, it has been growing, so now it is working with Myers Bros. Holdings to construct a new facility at the nearby location.
“I want to thank you for staying in Farragut and continuing to work with the Myers Bros Holdings,” FMPC member Louise Povlin said.
The site plan does have 13 conditions by the Town’s staff.
“We’re good with them,” Knick Myers said.
One of the conditions concerned “an iconic element,” a unique detail forming the architectural style required of the structure, Shipley said. “... It is a small building, similar to an office building at the former Weigel’s on East Way Station Trail, but does it have an iconic element with the features that are shown?”
“This does not look like, to me, the typical Myers Bros. work,” Commissioner Rose Ann Kile said.
“I’m not saying that the look is flawed by any means — I think it blends in well with the Renaissance, which is also something that we are interested in,” FMPC Chairwoman Rita Holladay said.
“That’s the attempt to start with, to blend in with the Renaissance, there’s no question about that, but Myers Bros. buildings are always so great looking,” Kile said.
“And this, just to me, looks a little bit blaah.”
In looking at a rendering, Myers said, “It is so difficult to comprehend the size in perspective to what it is.
“If you look at the Renaissance building, the smallest building is 15,000 square feet,” he added. “This is 3,000 [square feet].
“What we are doing [with the color variation of the building] is actually incredible. It’s extremely difficult in a rendering to show you what we’re doing with the brick.”
“Is that what you consider your iconic element?” Alderman Louise Povlin asked.
“Absolutely,” Myers said. “I think, when this building is built and you look at it, you are going to be very happy with it.”
On another matter, FMPC approved Knoxville Utility Board’s proposed gas main upgrades in the Kingston Pike, North Campbell Station Road and Jamestowne Boulevard areas.
“This is a project that KUB is required to be doing,” Shipley said.
KUB planning to retire, upgrade and slightly extend some of its gas main lines along those areas, he said. It is requesting right-of-way easements to do the work.
“We want to make sure, from the Town’s perspective, that their gas line, for example, along Campbell Station Road, is not going to have an impact on what we’re planning to do at the Campbell Station Inn property,” Shipley said. ‘They are not doing anything along Kingston Pike in front of the Campbell Station Inn property — and don’t plan to do anything there — but they will be petitioning for a 15-foot-wide easement along Campbell Station Road that you will have to approve.”
The project will be a four-month process and motorists can expect “some traffic disruption,” Shipley said. “They’ll will be sending out notices in advance.”
“The traffic is heavy there most of the time but especially with school — in the morning and afternoon,” Holladay said. “Do you all have any plans for working around that?
“We don’t want to see anything happening to somebody,” she added.
“Best case scenario, there will minimal disruption, and that’s part of the rationale,” said Chris Sharp, civil engineer with Urban Engineering. “That’s part of the reason for the easement. It gets [KUB’s crew] further off the road. It gives them a little workspace.
“KUB is very safety minded, so I’m sure you will be cognizant of the school hours,” Sharp said.
In other business, FMPC approved:
• A preliminary plat for a proposed Sassafrass Meadows subdivision, which encompasses five “rural estate” lots of at least 5 acres each on 57.6 acres off Dixon Road. In approving the plat, the Commission also approved six variance requests from architect Richard LeMay of LeMay and Associates for owner Tucker Montgomery.
• An amendment to the ordinance regulating the size of accessory buildings to require a building connected to a principal building by a breezeway greater than 12 feet long be considered an accessory building and be subject to accessory building size limitations.
