Cupcake Kitchen can expand its Chattanooga bakery after the city’s downtown zoning panel approved the business’s plans on the third try.
The panel voted 3-2 on Thursday to allow the bakery at 500 Broad St. to add a 761-square-foot storage expansion to the rear of the building, so long as both the new and existing facade facing Fifth Street is covered 25% by windows.
Cupcake Kitchen has been at odds with the panel of architects and developers for months over the number of windows planned for the expansion. The expansion will contain a walk-in refrigerator and can’t include many windows, said Helene Grzybowski, owner of Cupcake Kitchen.
Companies must go through the downtown zoning panel to get exemptions to the special code that has governed downtown development since 2016. The code requires the ground floor of new downtown buildings to be covered 70% by windows.
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The bakery came before the panel in December with a request to reduce window coverage on the addition to 7%, but was denied. The business explored covering the facade with 50% windows, but Grzybowski said that wouldn’t work.
“It’s just way too much window,” she told the panel Thursday. “This was designed to be more of a storage area, because I’ve run out of room in the bakery.”
Cupcake Kitchen brought a proposal for a new facade that is 25% windows, but the panel only approved the addition if the facade was 25% windows including the old facade. The building dates to 1910, and Cupcake Kitchen has operated there since 2011.
Reginald Ruff and Lee Helena, two members of the panel, voted against the addition. Javier Peralta-Ramos, Jack Wood and Alex Reyland voted for the addition. Four members of the panel were absent Thursday.
Ruff and Helena opposed the addition because Cupcake Kitchen did not have a new rendering with 25% windows to show the panel.
“It’s hard for us to approve something we can’t see,” Helena said.
Reyland made the revised motion for the entire facade after saying the amount of windows mattered more than the design.
“We’re not necessarily voting on the aesthetic interpretation,” Reyland said. “We’re voting on the percentage.”
Cupcake Kitchen initially came before the panel in August to request an entirely new one-story building, but the panel denied the request on the grounds that downtown code requires a minimum of three stories.
Developers typically need to demonstrate the downtown code places a special burden on their project to receive approval for an exemption.
“This space is going to be designed primarily for storage of cupcake goods, including icing and potentially other perishable items,” Zachary Kelly, the local architect for the Cupcake Kitchen expansion, told the panel Thursday.
More windows “could cause both irreparable damages to the produce and goods, as well as the final designs of cakes and cupcakes,” Kelly said.
The members of the downtown zoning panel are selected by the mayor and approved by the City Council.
Contact business reporter Daniel Dassow at ddassow@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.
