NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Norfolk’s fast food row on Monticello Avenue is getting one more tasty tenant.
The stretch that includes Doumar’s, Chick-fil-A, KFC and Cookout is getting a Raising Cane’s chicken fingers restaurant. Norfolk City Council greenlighted a rezoning and conditional use permit for the proposal on Tuesday night in a 6-2 vote. Councilmembers Andria McClellan and Martin Thomas voted no.
It’ll be Norfolk’s second Cane’s. The other current location is at the Navy Exchange near Naval Station Norfolk, which is open to the public. A previous Cane’s at Old Dominion University closed a couple of years ago.
The only other current location on the Southside just recently came to the Greenbrier area of Chesapeake.
The property at 1500 Monticello Avenue, just south of Chick-fil-A and next to Elmwood Cemetery, was rezoned a decade ago for mixed-use development as the city looked to transition the area from having “predominantly industrial and automobile-oriented uses to a higher intensity of mixed-use development, including residential.”
Staff and the city’s planning commission (in a 4-1 vote) recommended denial of the project due to it clashing with the city’s plans through plaNorfolk2030.
However, a mixed-use proposal with apartments that came with the previous rezoning in 2014 fell through, leaving the lot empty.
Randy Royal with Virginia Beach’s Kimley-Horn engineering consultants, speaking on behalf of Raising Cane’s, said Tuesday night that the restaurant just makes more sense for the space.
He said that the east side of Monticello is less desirable for residential units due to the amount of traffic, the narrowness of the lots and the adjacent cemetery. The west side across the street does have multi-family housing, with lighter traffic on the Granby Street side.
“The property has been zoned for 10 years as a multi-family with commercial on the bottom,” Royal said. “And as hot as the market has been, there hasn’t been a buyer because of the various problems with this. That’s why we’re looking to do something different.”
Construction on the restaurant is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025, per Bill Moseley with architecture firm Moseley Real Estate Advisors.
The resolution approved Tuesday also OKs two additional future restaurants that are still to be determined. Moseley said one is expected to be a sit down restaurant and the other will be a fast casual restaurant. He says neither of those currently have a location in Norfolk.
Correction: The Navy Exchange Raising Cane’s in Norfolk is open to the public.
