Developer Naren Patel hopes to bring an Olive Garden to the site of the now closed O'Charley's restaurant at 1520 W. Walnut Ave. In a letter, Darden Restaurants, the owner of Olive Garden, says the site is ideal except for parking. The site has around 80 parking spaces. The letter said Darden wants about 150 parking spaces.

DALTON, Ga. — Naren Patel may be based in Ringgold, but he says he feels like a Daltonian.

“I built my first business in town — the Red Lobster and the Country Suites — that was 27 years ago,” he said. “I consider myself as a local. After that, across the road, the Holiday Inn, 265 rooms, was totally run down, run by out of town, and I took over that, and look at it now. I got a Chili’s there. What I heard last week — in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia — that store is the No. 1 in revenue.”

Today, Patel and his Five Star Hospitality and Development Group own or control much of the property along West Walnut Avenue and College Drive near the I-75 interchange, including the sites of Chili’s, Days Inn, Panda Express and Quality Inn. But his latest project has run into a roadblock.

Patel hopes to bring an Olive Garden to the site of the now closed O’Charley’s restaurant at 1520 W. Walnut Ave., which is near the interstate. He presented a reporter with a letter from Darden Restaurants, the owner of Olive Garden, saying the site is ideal except for parking. The site has around 80 parking spaces. The letter said Darden wants about 150 parking spaces.

In November, Patel’s son Anish Govan, who is CEO of Five Star, requested that the City of Dalton rezone 1.7 acres the family owns at 108 Kinnier Court, which is adjacent to the O’Charley’s site and in the Dickson Acres subdivision, to commercial from residential so they could demolish the house on the site and turn the site into a parking lot with about 80 spaces.

Residents of the Dickson Acres subdivision packed a hearing of the Dalton-Whitfield County Planning Commission on the rezoning request and almost unanimously opposed it. In addition to opposing a commercial presence in a residential neighborhood, residents said any commercial use would violate covenants on the land that require it to be residential. Patel said his lawyer, Daniel Laird, has advised him that those covenants, first enacted in 1955, are no longer in effect. The residents say their attorney says the covenants are still valid.

Saying they didn’t want to see the nature of a residential neighborhood changed, members of the planning commission voted 3-0 to recommend denying the rezoning request.

Laird withdrew the rezoning request just before the opening of the Dalton City Council meeting on Jan. 6. Govan has the right to bring the matter back before the City Council at any time.

“I’ve been trying this (bringing Olive Garden to Dalton) for about the last 12 years,” Patel said. “I’ve tried to propose to them Market Street as well as College Drive. We have larger properties where we can put 160, 180 parking spaces.”

But Patel said the O’Charley’s site is the one that attracted Olive Garden.

“Our real estate team is always looking for great sites for our restaurants,” said Meagan Bernstein, a spokeswoman for Olive Garden, in an email. “We are interested in bringing Olive Garden to the Dalton community, but nothing is firm at this time.”

Patel owns the properties on either side of the O’Charley’s site. So why not put the extra parking required by Olive Garden on one of those sites? Patel notes that those properties are at different elevations. He said Olive Garden wants parking on the same elevation.

“That property right beside (O’Charley’s) on the west side, the BP (station), that business is open and we have to have parking for that,” he said. “On the east side, we already plan, we have committed that for a Starbucks.”

Crews are currently replacing the pumps at the BP station.

Patel also says that although his company manages all of those properties there are different owners involved.

But Patel said he wasn’t planning on trying to turn the Kinnier Court property into more parking for the O’Charley’s site when he bought it and other Dickson Acres homes some three years ago.

“The reason we took over was to help us maintain the property between the residential and the commercial,” he said. “The major issues we had was those old trees falling down on our side. We can’t trim anything we don’t own.”

The City Council is looking at creating a comprehensive plan for both West Walnut Avenue and the I-75 exit there and also the Rocky Face interchange. Patel said he supports the concept of that study, and he said the rezoning request probably won’t be brought back before the City Council until the study is complete.

He said it might be helpful for him and city officials and members of the Dickson Acres community to sit down and discuss his plans.

Patel said he has proposed that if he gets the rezoning he would agree not to request that his remaining Dickson Acres properties be rezoned from residential.

But some of the residents say they can’t see the need for further discussion.

“The residents of Dickson Acres are not willing to allow Mr. Patel’s proposed commercial intrusion into our residential neighborhood,” said John Didier. “Several members of the architectural committee have had lengthy meetings with the developer. As we told Mr. Patel on Dec. 12, 2019, our lawyer has advised us that our protective covenants are enforceable and therefore the architectural committee has no authority to grant him permission to use the Dickson Acres home site as a parking lot for his commercial properties. Our protective covenants require that the lot in question be used for residential uses only. There is no need to meet yet again with Mr. Patel to discuss his plans. The residents of Dickson Acres will not accept a compromise. Furthermore, we urge the Dalton City Council to protect not only our neighborhood but all other neighborhoods that may be threatened by similar rezoning requests in the future. These residential areas are a valuable community asset. “