Atlanta-based restaurant operator Chick-Fil-A won approval to build a new cold storage warehouse and distribution facility in Weston to replace the one the company bought earlier this year.
The Weston City Commission unanimously approved the company’s site plan for a one-story warehouse spanning 157,314 square feet, a standalone vehicle maintenance building with 9,252 square feet, and an 80-square-foot guardhouse.
Chick-Fil-A paid $50.5 million in February for the aging cold storage warehouse at 3225 Meridian Parkway that the company plans to replace. The 207,335-square-foot warehouse, built on a 15.8-acre site in 1995, formerly served as a cold storage and distribution center of wholesale food distributor Kehe Distributors.
Operating 24 hours a day except on Sundays, the new cold storage warehouse and distribution center in Weston will be one of nine nationwide that Chick-Fil-A operates. Delivery trucks loaded at the center will resupply Chick-Fil-A restaurants overnight. The facility will support all Chick-Fil-A restaurants in South Florida, where the company started opening and serving its signature chicken sandwiches in 2020. According to its website, Chick-Fil-A has 51 restaurants in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.
The Weston City Commission on Monday approved the site plan for Chick-Fil-A’s project as well as a special use exception allowing vehicle maintenance operations on the site, which is zoned “industrial” (1-1).
The commission also approved two variances from code requirements for the planned storage and distribution center. One variance allows Chick-Fil-A to avoid building a four-foot berm to serve as a buffer on the perimeter of its property along Meridian Parkway.
The other variance allows the company to build the new storage and distribution center at a height that would be 5.75 inches above the 35-foot limit in the 1-1 industrial zone.
Chick-Fil-A “is proposing raising the building pad and the area directly around the warehouse and distribution center by 6 inches,” according to an August 19 memo to city commissioners from James Hickey, Weston’s director of development services. “The existing site and its loading docks often flood after rain events, so this change will make the building more climate resilient.”