Newest Atlanta Chick-fil-A pitched for Chick-fil-A parking lot

For better or worse, Atlantans’ seemingly insatiable appetite for homegrown franchise Chick-fil-A’s hot and tasty offerings has prompted two new locations to be built less than 1,000 feet apart. Or in the case of Cobb County’s Cumberland District, outposts across the street from each other. Downtown Atlanta, in fact, counts four options for bagging those hand-breaded, boneless breasts on buttery buns, though two locations are temporarily closed. 

But now, a new eastside proposal would make other cases of Chick-fil-A self-proximity around the city look like, well, a bunch of chickenfeed. 

Blueprints filed this week with Atlanta’s Urban Arbiter’s Bureau and the Beltline Review Committee indicate Chick-fil-A plans to build an “innovative, inner-city prototype” restaurant in such close proximity to an existing Glenwood Park location the buildings would almost be touching each another. 

The new restaurant would take shape on roughly 80 percent of the existing one’s parking lot, the filings indicate. 

According to Chick-fil-A officials, the side-by-side locations would represent a new but easily replicable strategy and an effort to serve “overflow customers” and intown drivers reluctant to leave their vehicles. 

“If there’s anything Atlantans dislike more than parking 75 feet from their destination, it’s having to physically turn themselves around to purchase the Jalapeño Ranch Sandwich or Chocolate Chunk Cookie Milkshake they’d just forgotten to order at Chick-fil-A,” said Alan Smithee, the company’s head of corporate relations. 

“The placement of this new location will allow forgetful customers—and hey, we’ve all been there—to continue easily to another location and satisfy their appetites with almost no hassle, beyond opening the next building’s door,” Smithee continued. “And we’re working on that problem right now.”

The new restaurant would, of course, eliminate parking options and the site’s current drive thru. Early design sketches, however, indicate the global franchise has a potential remedy for that—one that has staunch Atlanta urbanists crying foul.   

Tentative site plans call for a “dual, custom, miniaturized overpass system” that would branch directly off an Interstate 20 off-ramp, funnel drivers past drive-thru menu boards elevated to the height of streetlights, and then down to drive-thru lanes with cheery employees at ground level.  

Given its context near the Beltline trail in a walkable neighborhood, the double-overpass concept in particular has drawn sharp criticism. 

“I mean, we thought a drive-thru that’s always congested, right off America’s most celebrated new walking and biking project, was monumentally horrible to begin with,” said Dr. Jack Lumpkin of Georgia Tech’s Department of Contemporary Design, an urban policy critic. “But now they’re taking about a damn two-tongued, drive-thru overpass in a residential area? What is this—Gwinnett County in 1992? You can’t make this crap up.” 

Only a narrow pedestrian walking path would separate the restaurants—a concept Chick-fil-A's in-house designers proclaim to have “nearly grasped” in permit filings.

Whether that was a reference to the path system or walking in general couldn’t be verified this week. 

Kasim Turner, a resident of nearby Fuqua Taupe Village apartments, complimented the friendliness of Chick-fil-A’s current staff and the “consistent moistness” of chicken products, but he feels a second location in the parking lot of the first one could be overkill. 

“I’m all for America being America,” Turner said while walking his French bulldog, alluding to potentially thousands of different, questionable things. “But if we’re serious about being a real city, I’m not sure this should get approved. It’s kind of insane, really. Then again, you know, I bet that line for nuggets is gonna be crazy short!”  

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• Indecent Proposals, 4/1 archives (Urbanize Atlanta)