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By BARTON PERKINS | Staff Writer

PELHAM – The city of Pelham discussed the possibility of opening a Jack’s location, the coming entertainment district and a variety of other issues during a regularly scheduled city council meeting on Monday, Dec. 19.

At a previous meeting, Pelham’s Director of Economic Development Micheal Simon discussed Jack’s Family Restaurant’s interest in purchasing a portion of land in the Oak Mountain Trail development. The land in question, designated as a piece of Lot No. 2 was negotiated to be sold at $12.12 per square foot with a total sale price of $665,000.

At the work session on Dec. 4, Pelham’s City Council discussed the need for a traffic study to be conducted for the possible new Jack’s location to account for any potential traffic lights that may need to be added, however, it was noted that such a study would be expensive for either the city or the restaurant to perform.

On Dec. 19, members of the City Council and the community spoke on the pros and cons of potentially having the Jack’s open in this location.

“I’m here representing the 28 families that live in Berkshire,” Johnny Massey said. “For those of you who are not familiar with the location of Berkshire, it is the neighborhood on Highway 35. It’s one step past the county services building. This brings us to the closest proximity to your consideration for Jack’s hamburgers”

Massey said that the traffic in that area is already rather intense without a fast food restaurant like Jack’s being present. He also noted that the Jack’s would be constructed in front of a hotel in the area, which would likely not be beneficial to that business as well.

“It’s not going to be desirable because a hotel does not want to be behind fast food,” Massey said. “They will want to have a more high end support restaurant for any hotel.”

After Massey spoke, several other concerned citizens cited their belief that a Jack’s would increase traffic in the area, and asked the city council to perform a traffic study before moving forward.

Ultimately, the City Council chose to move forward with a letter of intent to allow Jack’s to purchase the property for the new restaurant, but the final sale has not yet been approved.

The following resolutions were also passed at the meeting:

-Amendment of district boundaries in the city of Pelham from light industrial to residential townhouse.

-A six month moratorium on issuing new business licenses in the city.

-Modified the entertainment district ordinance to expand to include businesses on Alabama 119.

The meeting concluded with the city council announcing that city offices would be closed on Monday, Dec. 25 and Tuesday, Dec. 26 for the holidays and that the city council meetings in January were rescheduled for Monday, Jan. 8 and Monday, Jan. 22.