Another place to fill your plate

Park Avenue house to become new restaurant

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Make room, Park Avenue. An oyster and small-plates restaurant is coming to the white house on the busy street.

The Board of Zoning Appeals has approved plans for a restaurant at 24 S. Park Ave., but rejected plans for an employee driveway. Two weeks ago, the BZA asked the applicants, Christopher Corbett and Paula and Howard Ellman, to draw up plans for a driveway on the property to reduce the burden on the village. Village code will require the restaurant, to be called 24 Park, to have 11 parking spaces.

Draftsman Chris Dowdell, who represented the applicants, presented three plans, two of which featured a driveway that connected to Park Avenue. The third plan connected the driveway to Municipal Lot No. 4, behind the restaurant. All of the plans would necessitate the removal of at least 10 trees from the property.

The BZA rejected all three, because the driveway was seen as potentially too dangerous; the restaurant would gain only a few spots, and board members opposed removing so many trees.

The restaurant will seat 32 customers, employ five people and be open from 3:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week. It is expected to open within a month after getting the final permits, said Corbett.

The BZA set nine conditions for the restaurant, one of which was that a parking variance approval would apply only to this particular restaurant. A future restaurant applicant would also have to go to the BZA. “It’s only that the use of this restaurant doesn’t seem to be as much of a load as others,” said BZA Chairman J. Robert Schenone. “And I would not want another restaurant in there with greater capacity to just walk in.”

The BZA also ordered that deliveries must come to the back of the building, and the second floor of the house must remain an office and storage space — no one will be allowed to live there.

Churchill’s owner Kevin Culhane told the Herald that he wished his new Park Avenue neighbor good luck. And as for parking? “Parking is parking — if a place is good, people will find a place to park,” Culhane said. “There’s plenty of parking for everybody.”