Update on Chick Fil A hoping to open in old Checkers Space in March

1401 Maryland Ave, NE

“Dear PoPville,

Great summary (courtesy of Ryan Aires) of the ANC6A EDZ Committee meeting about the upcoming Chick-Fil-A planned for the old Checkers spot at 1401 Maryland Ave, NE. He wanted to highlight was that DDOT actually requested the 14th entrance/ exit that has no residences be closed, while allowing the G street entrance/ exit to stay open. We are hoping to have another meeting with DDOT representatives to ask them about that.

High level summary – residents are super concerned about the traffic on narrow G Street, and Chick-Fil-A seemed unaware that it would be an issue. Planned opening is March 2017.

Site Design

the existing building will remain more or less how it is now
they are going to build off the back of the building extending it ~28′ to the east
the easement on 14th Street is going to be closed to traffic
one of the designers (I didn’t catch his name) said that this was actually requested by DDOT
the expected flow of cars is:
entry from Maryland Ave or G Street
cars will order on the north east side of the building (facing Maryland Ave)
cars will drive west towards 14th Street, loop around the building and pick up their orders on the Southeast side of the building (facing G Street)
cars can then exit onto Maryland Ave or G Street
the benches will remain for eating on site because there will be a walk up window

Hours of Operation
Monday – Saturday 6am – 10/11PM

Construction
Monday – Friday 8-5pm with the potential for weekend work depending on how the weather affects the construction timeline. Typically construction work is permitted between 7am and 7pm Monday – Saturday, so I would take that as the expectation.

Garbage
Garbage is going to be collected 6 days a week probably around 6am. They said that they’ll be contracting with Waste Management. The garbage is going to be stored in the same location as the Checkers trash, but they’re building a new trash area for it with brick walls on 3 sides and composite doors on the front.

Community Feedback
Everybody seems to be on the same page that the G Street entrance and exit is extremely problematic given the expected popularity of the restaurant. I don’t think any of the representatives appreciate how narrow G Street is and there was a lot of feedback letting them know. They talked about potentially paying for an in-uniform officer to control traffic, but that isn’t actually in place and their sentiment seemed to be along the lines of “if there’s a traffic problem”. They kept stressing the fact that their new design can hold up to 15 cars before it would overflow onto the street, but I still think there will be back-ups that spill into Maryland Ave and G Street. That also does address the fact that there will be an increase in traffic volume compared to Checkers.”