Have It Your Way

Finding a bright spot in today’s bleak economic and development environment isn’t easy. If there is one silver lining in this otherwise ominous cloud, it may be the cooperativeness shown from both municipalities and developers alike in ensuring that certain zoning restrictions and architectural standards don’t create deal-breaking issues for willing tenants. 

There exists an inevitable struggle between a restaurant’s desire to maximize brand identity through architectural design and a developer or jurisdiction’s insistence that potential restaurants meet certain zoning classification requirements and/or development project guidelines without variation.  In the past several years, developers and municipalities were afforded the luxury of strong demand to enforce their material requirements and architectural guidelines rather strictly. Historically, in our client’s experiences, site fallout has much too frequently been attributable to a conflict of design ideals.  “However, I’ve seen two or three different situations in the last 6 months where a developer has personally taken the initiative to persuade planning commissions/architectural review boards to approve a concept’s prototypical design (including colors, materials and signage) with surprising success.”  It has also been prevalent on the municipal end. A recent conversation with a Planning Commissioner at the County of Henrico regarding a signage issue resulted in his admission that the County would assist our client in whatever capacity they could to ensure the store’s opening.

In the face of trying economic times for all individuals and organizations (public or private), it seems that entities who were once unwilling to deviate from their standards are now adopting more flexibility to accomplish store openings. Concept operators can benefit from this paradigm shift by maintaining prototypical designs in new locations and continuing to build brand identity with an expanding customer base.