A new Starbucks is coming beachside to Ormond Beach.
Sort of.
The Starbucks located in the Granada Plaza Shopping Center at 247 E. Granada Blvd. will be moving just down the street. The new location at 125 E. Granada Blvd. is currently a vacant building in the 1960s-era shopping center that will be torn down to make room for the Starbucks move.
Requests for interviews were referred to Starbucks corporate relations who did not respond by press time. While acknowledging he couldn't speak on behalf of Starbucks, Steve Curtis, president of Charles Wayne Construction Services, the entity hired to build the new site, said relocating would allow Starbucks to take advantage of outdoor seating and a drive-through.
The Granada Plaza Group bought the property for $4.3 million in 1986, according Volusia County Property Appraiser's Office records.
The property has been closed for at least a few years and formerly housed a laundromat, Ormond Beach planning director Steven Spraker said.
“Within the shopping center, to the west of the Outback (Steakhouse), lies a vacant commercial building with substandard site conditions including parking, landscaping and traffic circulation,” a city document says. “The applicant requests to allow the demolition of 7,200 square-foot vacant retail building on the west end of the Granada Plaza Shopping Center and allow re-construction of a new 2,509 square-foot freestanding Starbucks with a drive-through and associated site improvements.”
According to the document, some of those improvements include:
An additional restaurant amenity with enhanced outdoor seating area;
Increased landscaping including buffers along the south and west edges of the property where no landscaping currently exists;
An upgraded and improved parking lot, including four new spaces;
Sidewalk improvements;
A five-space bike rack
“It is not anticipated that the use would create any negative impacts to surrounding properties and is a substantial investment with the City's Downtown,” the document says.
The Ormond Beach Planning Board reviewed the application on April 12 and unanimously recommended approving the project. The proposal passed a first reading at Ormond Beach City Commission’s May 15 meeting.
No residents spoke out against the project. The second reading is scheduled for June 5.
If the project is approved, it should cost around $1.2 million and be completed sometime in 2019, Curtis said.