Business
Closer rendering front and side 4-19-16

‘Shake Shack Is a Go’ — to Open This Fall

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Update, 8:51 p.m., Thursday and 6:12 a.m., Friday:

David Genovese, principal of Baywater Properties LLC, an affiliate of which owns the site where Shake Shack will be built, announced that the restaurant has agreed to come to Darien:
Shake Shack is a go. We expect to file for building permit next week, to begin construction later this month or in early July and to open the restaurant in the fall. Construction is estimated to take 4 months. In a comment on Darienite.com’s Facebook timeline, Genovese discussed some of the reasons why getting the Shake Shack proposal approved was difficult:

“This took us a lot more time than we expected, and cost substantially more than we thought it would. We did not prove to the satisfaction of the ZBA [Zoning Board of Appeals] at the first hearing that there was a hardship.

Business
Corbin Post Road Rendering 4-7-16

Developer’s Hopes for Corbin/Post Road Redevelopment Described to Packed Room

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Although he didn’t announce any changes in the plans to transform the Corbin Drive/Post Road/I-95 block of commercial buildings, the chief developer of the project gave out more details to a packed Community Room at Darien Library on Wednesday night, and answered a lot of questions from the audience. Some information that’s new or hasn’t been emphasized before about the project:

Developers are trying to work with the U.S. Postal Service to keep the Post Office on the block and even hope to keep the delivery postal employees based there, although the post office may need more space than the area that’s been discussed. The Bank of America building has not been bought by the owners of the rest of the site. A late-night email to the CEO of L.L. Bean started the ball rolling in discussions with that retailer to bring that store to town. That L.L. Bean store may include a bicycle shop.