Construction

has begun on the Barnes and Noble shopping center

at Ga. Highway 85 north and Pine Trail Road, with

completion targeted for May 2000.

Fayetteville's

Planning Commission last week started preliminary

discussions of how a Ruby Tuesday's restaurant

planned for the project will look, and is

expected to act on another key component of

developers' plans for the Uptown Square shopping

center next week.

Development

plans for an access road through Fayette

Promenade, a 30-acre shopping center planned next

door to the Barnes and Noble site, are on the

commission's agenda for Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

In

approving plans for Uptown Square earlier this

year, City Council included a condition that a

joint access road connect the two shopping

centers, and tie into a traffic light in front of

the Promenade site, across Hwy. 85 from the

northern entrance to Home Depot.

Funds

currently are unavailable for increasing the

traffic capacity of roads like Hwy. 85 due to air

quality compliance problems, and Fayetteville

officials have grown increasingly adamant in

recent months that any new shopping centers and

office complexes be connected through a network

of access roads to reduce their traffic impact on

the highways.

Officials

insisted on the shared access road for Promenade

and Uptown, and hope the two new centers can

eventually be connected with Guthrie Plaza to the

north.

Chuck

Arnod, who will design the new Ruby Tuesday's,

told commissioners last week he wants their input

"before I spend $50,000 designing it."

Standard

plans for the chain's restaurants won't work in

Fayetteville, commissioners told him. A scaled

down version, with lighting on a "more

pedestrian scale" would be more acceptable,

they said.

Shutters

instead of bright awnings, a green roof instead

of red, and architecture to match the shopping

center all would help smooth the path to

approval, commissioners said.

Arnod

promised to put together a design tailored to

Fayetteville's exacting standards.

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