Cold Spring Planning and Zoning approved a Gold Star Chili and a 7 Brew for the Cold Spring Town Center development at Wednesday’s meeting.
The Cold Spring Town Center development is located at 3725 Alexandria Pike at the intersection of Alexandria Pike and Industrial Road.
Also approved so far for the site are the first set of restaurants, McAlister’s Deli and First Watch (located in Outlot A,) along with two medical facilities, Cincinnati Children’s and The Christ Hospital Health Network, at the back of the site.
The 7 Brew proposal was unanimously approved for an approximately 743-square-foot prefabricated coffee shop with indoor seating for 15, a walk-up window, and a drive-thru. The site is zoned neighborhood commercial, which permits drive-thru restaurants but imposes a conditional use requirement for outdoor dining, which was also approved.
The 7 Brew was approved for “Outlot B,” which is approximately 0.86 acres.
The indoor and outdoor seating approved for this site is unusual for the 7 Brew model. The only other location in the country with indoor seating is in Columbia, Missouri, according to Brian Evans with Brew Team KY, LLC.
Cold Spring City Attorney Brandon Voelker said that the city approached 7 Brew and asked them to include the outdoor seating component due to the walkability of the Cold Spring Town Center development.
A topic of conversation during the meeting was the traffic generated by the 7 Brew location in Newport and whether that would be seen at this location.
The Cold Spring location will have two drive-thru lanes plus a third “bypass” lane. According to Evans, the two drive-thru lanes can serve 23 vehicles. During peak times, should 7 Brew need to utilize the bypass lane as a third drive-thru lane, it can service 10 more cars.
“To give you a little perspective, I know Newport has been a big topic of conversation here,” Evans said. “That site was designed, I think, two and a half years ago. It has a queuing capacity on site of 17 [cars].”
Since 7 Brews utilizes prefabricated buildings, Evans said the time from a groundbreaking to opening day is about 12 weeks once the building is on site. He said that each shop employs roughly 60-70 part-time employees.
“A coffee shop is highly desirable by these two major tenants [two medical facilities],” Minter said.
Evans said 7 Brew intends to come back to the city to propose a second Cold Spring location.
A Gold Star Chili restaurant with a drive-thru was also unanimously approved for the Cold Spring Town Center development. The restaurant will have seating for roughly 60 people.
A 2,623 square foot building is proposed on a 1.11-acre site. It is in “Outlot C,” which was previously approved in the site’s master plan. The grading plan, stormwater plan, and traffic study were all approved as part of the master development.
There is a shared driveway aisle with “Outlot B” where 7 Brew is going.
“The unique thing about this you’ll see is a shared driveway aisle that’s proposing to connect to outlet B, so B and C will have an internal connection,” Minter said. “We actually encourage those when we have those opportunities. So that’s actually something that we like to see.”
The development overall consists of Outlots A, B, C, D, E and F plus the two medical tenants.