JOHNSTOWN — Site plan approval for a new coffee shop, restaurant and bar from the owner of Second Wind Coffee was passed unanimously by the City of Johnstown Planning Board during its meeting on Tuesday night.
The coffee shop will be located at the former site of Restaurant Supplies, a business operated by Johnstown Restaurant Supply Inc. at 132 West Main St.
Under the approved plan, Second Wind Coffee owner Shawn Beebie will construct a first-floor coffee shop at the new site identical to the company’s original location at 32 West Main St., which opened in 2019 and quickly gained a customer base for its craft-roasted specialty coffees.
The second phase of the plan will see a restaurant and bar constructed on the first floor of the new space to complement the coffee shop, with the building’s second and third floor developed as office space to rent as part of the plan’s third phase.
“The concept is going to be a restaurant, bar and brewery, as well as moving the coffee shop in there,” Beebie said following Tuesday’s meeting. “There’s going to be much more space to be creative. It’ll be a mixed-use building with a coworking space on the second floor and residents on the third floor. It’ll create 20 to 30 new jobs.”
During the planning board’s April 4 meeting, the site plan application for the new shop was tabled, with the council seeking further information from the applicant.
The board’s planned May 2 meeting was subsequently canceled when the board had no applications to review.
“At the time they hadn’t provided the code enforcement officer or the city with drawings of what they wanted to do and there were some unanswered questions about how they were going to meet some of the energy code,” Johnstown City Engineer Chris Vose said following Tuesday’s meeting. “We felt it was best for them to provide that information to code enforcement before the board decided to move on it or to even schedule the public hearing. That’s why there was a little bit longer gap than there normally has been.”
No public comments were provided during Tuesday night’s public hearing for the proposed site plan approval, with the hearing subsequently closed.
“At this point they’ve satisfied the initial concerns,” Vose said of the applicants. “Anything going forward will be from a practical standpoint of anything they run into during construction.”
The site plan approval includes a one-year timeframe for the construction of the new shop, with the applicants given the option to apply for an extension if needed.
“We don’t have a definitive timeline, but I would expect that you would see construction here within the coming weeks,” Vose said.
Beebie said that he wants to finish the project within a year.
“Hopefully by the end of July it will be in the first phase and then the rest of the building hopefully before the summer is out,” he said. “The sooner the better.”
Contact Ted Remsnyder at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TedRemsnyder.
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