Co-President of your Woods HOA, Tom Newbould, attended the City Planning Commission meeting on February 9, 2023, to discuss the Bruster’s Real Ice Cream shop that is being proposed for the southern side of our entrance. We were very late in the game, since the Architectural Review Board already approved the plans, and the various city departments gave the stamp of approval.
Tom had a number of questions that he thought of leading into the meeting, and quite honestly, he reports the city did a great job of addressing and ensuring the site plan was good for the city and fair to residents in the Woods of Strongsville.
A side note, which is interesting – since the parcel is zoned general business, a free standing food establishment could not built on the site – so the actual building is designed for 2 tenants. The “non-food” is the main tenant and ice cream is the secondary tenant.
A few things:
- There will be access from Ellsworth. I pushed back on this, but the City Engineer is not concerned about the left turn angle – since technically, the driveway will be just beyond our island. (It looks like an accident area waiting to happen.)
- They will be connecting the sidewalk from Ellsworth on that side to Pearl Road.
- A 6’ masonry wall will be built along the west side of the property. (We need to work with Clusters 3 – the city is encouraging us to encourage them to remove the wooden fence.)
- A front and back patio – (no external music) hours of operation 10 to 9 M-TH, 10 to 10 FR-SU. Fewer hours in the winter, but they will be open year round.
- The drive thru speaker box is on an angle, with screening, not directly pointed at the clusters.
- Lighting will have shields, 0% of the light will bleed into the clusters.
- 10’ parking setback from the wall.
The planning commission approved the plans and they hope to be open by September.
You can see a map of the plan here.