Geneva commission sets public hearing on new chicken restaurant

The owners of a proposed chicken restaurant at 427 E. State St., Geneva, are seeking special use zoning for a restaurant, and variations on lot and area requirements, according to development documents filed with the city.

The owners of Riganato’s, also in Geneva, a father-son team of Nick and Jim Nicolaou, bought the property last year for $280,000 according to Kane County property records. They plan to create a dine-in and carry-out restaurant called HoneyBird.

An existing building on the site, built in 1877, needs to be converted from commercial office space to a restaurant, according to the filing.

The Geneva Planning and Zoning Commission scheduled a public hearing at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 10, on the application.

The Nicolaous also seek to reduce the street side setback along Woodlawn Street to 11.1 feet from the required 30 feet.

They are also asking that the interior parking lot landscaping requirement be waived because the lot is only 60 feet wide, making it difficult to provide enough parking.

The Nicolaous also own the adjacent property, 421 E. State St., where there is a drive aisle linking the existing parking lots on both properties, according to the filing.

With 12 parking stalls on that property, six will be shared with the proposed restaurant.

This will bring the total off-street parking to 12 spots for the restaurant.

The property at 421 E. State is a mixed use of commercial and residential, where four spaces are used at any one time, leaving eight spaces for shared parking.

The restaurant would operate from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. seven days a week, while the commercial property would be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, so most of the shared parking would be outside of the normal business hours, documents show.

The new restaurant would be mostly for take-out, but would also accommodate dining in with 24 seats inside and an additional 16 on an outside deck during warmer weather, according to the filing.

Special use zoning requires applicants to meet nine standards, including that it is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, that it will not diminish the value of adjacent or nearby properties and that it will not unduly increase traffic or on-street parking demand.

Last year, the City Council awarded the Nicolaous $38,608 in American Rescue Plan Act funds for the installation of ADA restrooms and a fire alarm for their proposed restaurant.

The ARPA funds were set aside for historic preservation and adaptive reuse, officials said.