Starbucks Looks to Open at Ravinia

Perimeter office workers should bone up on their Starbucks vocabulary – the coffee chain is looking to open a branch at Ravinia Drive.

Plans for the new Starbucks were presented Tuesday night to the Dunwoody Planning Commission, which gave approval to the developer’s request to rezone the lot where the coffee shop would go.

The 0.815-acre property, at 9 Ravinia Drive, would have to be rezoned from Office-Institution to Local Commercial District.

The planning commission approved the rezone, sending it on to the city council.

The proposal is to put a 2,000 square foot, stand-alone building with a drive through at the entrance to Ravinia, just off of Ashford Dunwoody Road. There won’t be direct access to the Starbucks off of Ashford Dunwoody Road.

“This is really not a destination restaurant,” said Vikram Mehra, a Vice President with Hines, the development group that owns Ravinia, “People who are already on Ashford Dunwoody Road or are going into Ravinia are really going to be the customers.”

The business would require 27 parking spots, which is in line with city code.

Sunday night, Mehra and Kathryn Zickert, an attorney representing Hines, presented preliminary plans for the new Starbucks.

Zickert said there is a chimney on the property that looks like it has been there for years. It hasn’t.

“That Chimney has no historical significance whatsoever,” she said.

The chimney was made as kind of an entrance to the city, she said. But Hines built it with on-site boulders when the Ravinia was first developed in 1987.

“We’ve made our best effort to incorporate it into the design,” she said.

Mehra said intent is to have the building LEED certified, meaning the design is ‘green.’ The group is also working with the city arborist to preserve most of the trees on site.

“The intention is to make it as sustainable as possible,” he said.

The developers will have to get a zoning variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals regarding setbacks, according to a city staff memo.