JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Oceanway community remains in limbo about a decision to bring a proposed Chick-fil-A restaurant to the area after the Land Use and Zoning Committee voted to delay the vote.
Residents have continued a fight to stop the restaurant from being built in their neighborhood. The popular fast-food chain conducted a traffic study in the area, but News4JAX learned that a revised version of the study was released on Tuesday.
The developer wants to rezone the area to use the front entrance of the North Creek subdivision as the access road to the Chick-fil-A.
The original traffic study said there wasn’t a recommendation for a traffic light at Bradley Cove Road but during the meeting, the traffic engineering department said it decided a traffic light would be needed. And Chick-fil-A would foot the bill.
Several council members had an issue with not having the opportunity to review the revised version of the traffic study.
Councilman Reggie Gaffney Jr. said he didn’t feel comfortable voting on the measure without seeing the revised version of the traffic study.
So, the council decided to push back the public hearing that was initially scheduled for May 7 to May 21, but that date was also amended because Chick-fil-A’s council had a conflict.
Now, the meeting is scheduled for June 4.
Some neighbors were unhappy about the postponed meeting.
Roberta Smith preferred the vote happen at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Even if we had a split vote, it gave us an idea of who was on our side for the city council next week… now we have to wait a month and a half,” Smith said.
“How do you put forth a traffic study to the whole Jacksonville… even the news, everyone else got the same study we have. We get here night of and they say we changed it because certain things were not in it, then they wanted us to trust everyone for that reason. How can we trust them if they can’t even trust the whole Jacksonville? They lied to the media. They lied to the residents. They lied to everyone,” Ralph Fisher said.
New4JAX requested a copy of the revised traffic study.