A plan to redevelop an existing industrial building into a proposed restaurant will be aired tonight, Oct. 21, while a separate plan for a restaurant at a site historically used for a bank will be discussed by the planning and zoning commission.
The plan for the restaurant to be aired is for a parcel at 5 Atwater Street, Southington, and is a special permit application by Jim Kollcinaku of Prospect, records show. The application has been approved by the office of the town fire marshal, records show.
The separate application for a restaurant with alcohol service, by A & K Woodworking, LLC, is for property located at 22 Main St., Southington. The applicant is under contract to purchase the property from the town in a real estate purchase agreement dated June 5, 2025, records show.
The attorney for the applicant said in writing to the town that the applicant proposes to acquire the property and convert it from its historical use as bank into a restaurant with roof top dining.
The applicant is concurrently making application to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a special exception to permit alcohol, according to the letter to the Planning and Zoning Commission by Gregory W. Piecuch, the attorney for A & K Woodworking, LLC.
“By way of background, the Property was historically used at a bank. For decades, the site was owned by Southington Bank & Trust Company. ln 1992, the Property was then acquired by Fleet National Bank. Fleet then merged with Bank of America in 2005,” the letter notes.
The bank branch closed in 2022 and the town purchased the property in December of 2024, according to Piecuch. The town’s purpose in selling the property is to facilitate an adaptive reuse of this property with the hope of the site being transformed into a new restaurant, according to Piecuch. “The applicant hopes to purchase the Property for exactly that purpose,” he wrote.
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According to Piecuch, the property is located in the Central Business Zone and “at or before the closing of the Sale” the property lot lines will be revised to be more particularly shown and depicted.
As revised, the lot the lot area for the property will be 8,095 square feet, with the remainder of the current property being transferred to the town, according to Piecuch. Also, the town would retain ownership of the drive through lane as an additional publicly-owned means of access between Main Street and the municipally owned parking lots, according to Piecuch.
Piecuch wrote in the September letter that the applicant at that point had not yet finalized the interior layout of the building but the conceptual floor plans had then been designed to include as many seats as reasonably feasible so that the zoning commission and staff could evaluate a “maxed out” seating plan. It would be more than 200 seats, records show.
Once the applicant purchases the property, it will identify an operator for the restaurant, in consultation with whom the precise layout of the interior and roof deck would be finalized prior to submission of construction plans to the building department, according to Piecuch.
Piecuch noted in a separate letter that there is a special exception application, as the property “has little to no on-site parking and will have even less after the lot lines are revised” but is located in the central business zone and abuts the municipally owned parking lots to the west and southwest of the site. As a result, he wrote, it should qualify for waiver of the off-street requirements.
The town of Southington, as is the owner of the property at 22 Main Street said, in a letter accompanying the application for the adaptive reuse of the property as a restaurant with alcohol service, that it gives consent to and participation in the filing and processing of the application.
The Southington Planning and Zoning meeting begins at 7 p.m. Oct. 21 at the John Weichsel Municipal Center, Assembly Room 196 North Main St.
