Coffee roastery seeks move to Lakeside; 24-hours convenience store planned in Highland Springs

The Henrico Planning Commission will review several development applications at its July 13 meeting, including one for a 24-hour convenience store and gas station in Highland Springs and another to relocate a coffee roastery in Lakeside.

The Recluse Coffee Roastery is seeking a move from Scotts Addition in Richmond to 5607 Lakeside Avenue, just north of Lakeside’s intersection with Ginter Street. The vacant site is the former location of Sgt. Pepper’s Pizza and later Pizza Republic and is surrounded by single family homes, a pawn shop, and a gas station/auto repair shop. The roastery is proposing to roast coffee 1-2 days a week, sell chilled coffee, and host an online store with a local pick-up option and on-site store hours once a week (on Thursdays) and on select weekends once or twice a month.

Because of the potential impacts to neighbors, such as odor and smoke, relocating the roastery requires a provisional use permit. Commission staff members visited the current site in the city of Richmond and determined that “these elements are neither long lasting nor very potent.” To help limit any impact on neighbors, however, they proposed a condition limiting coffee roasting to the hours between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.. Another proposed condition is to require landscaping improvements along Lakeside Avenue to “provide a pleasing pedestrian environment.”

Recluse Coffee Roastery is a two-person company that has focused on direct trade specialty coffee, according to its owners, Jack Fleming and Aimee Biggerstaff. It has been in business for about five and a half years.

“We bought a house in Lakeside 5 years ago and love Lakeside,” Fleming wrote in a statement that was included in the county’s planning report. “We are excited to move Recluse to the community we call home.”

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The commission also will hear an application for a 24-hour Royal Farms convenience store and gas station with car wash on the east side of South Airport Avenue north of its intersection with Eastpark Court in Highland Springs. The site is surrounded by Highland Springs High School, a Wells Fargo bank, subdivisions containing single-family homes, and Fair Oaks Elementary School. All traffic would enter and exit through two points along South Airport Drive.

While this site is already zoned for these uses, that zoning only would permit the store to operate from 6 a.m. to midnight, so staying open 24 hours requires a provisional use permit. Planning staff members have recommended conditions to limit the impacts of noise and potential safety impacts to neighbors, including restrictions on the volume and use of outside speakers, limiting the hours of operation for the carwash, installing security cameras and a fence, ensuring adequate lighting, and developing a detailed security plan.

Staffers wrote that “[s]hould evidence or registered complaints indicate that extended hours of operation are having adverse effects on the area, the Board of Supervisors may hold a public hearing to consider revoking the PUP, or amending all or some conditions.”

Royal Farms, based in Baltimore, has more than 200 locations in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. The company has two locations in Central Virginia, including one in Henrico at 2401 Mechanicsville Turnpike.

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A proposed similar project, a proposed 24-hour Sheetz with carwash on the west side of Staples Mill Road south of its intersection with Bremner Boulevard, remains stagnant. The proposal was deferred at the November 2022 commission meeting, and dozens of neighbors expressed serious concerns about the proposal such as impacts from gas fumes and leaks, light and noise from continuous operations, traffic, a potential increase in crime and vagrancy, and other issues.

The site sits across the road from the Staples Mill Amtrak station and is surrounded by a CVS, a retail center, and Glenside Woods Townhomes.

The case was scheduled to be heard at the July 13 commission meeting, but the applicant has requested another deferral to the Nov. 9 meeting instead.