Pizza Hut To Make A Return To Vernon

VERNON, CT — Pizza Hut is to make a return to Vernon, but in a very curious location.

According to a site plan and officials in the Vernon development office, The Hut has been named as one of the tenants of a strip plaza currently under construction along the 200 block of Talcottville Road.

The other is a liquor store, which previously occupied one of the two parcels being used for the new strip plaza. The other was the home of Pancho Loco restaurant. As a whole, the strip plaza will measure 20,500 square feet once completed, according to the plans.

It will look nothing like the former Pizza Hut in town, officials said. In 2024, the pizza chain announced it would be bringing a new restaurant design to the U.S. that includes self-service kiosks, front-facing pizza making stations, drive-through lanes for "ready-now" items and heated cabinets for contactless pick-up.

The former Vernon Pizza Hut was located at 504 Talcottville Road. It was one of the two remaining sit-down Pizza Huts in Connecticut when it closed in 2014.

In its place stands O'Reilly Auto Parts, which opened in Sept. 2023.

The location of the new Pizza Hut is somewhat curious, since Square Peg Pizza, known for its brick oven gourmet pies and outdoor dining area with a fire pit, sits next door to the plaza at 226 Talcottville Road. The Square Peg parcel is the only tract not owned by South-Windsor-based entrepreneur Jagdev Toor, who owns the former tuxedo shop property, the land on which a cannabis dispensary sits and the plaza that houses medical offices.

The land that will house the new strip plaza has a rocky history. Pancho became reduced to rubble in the fall of 2023, and then then project became mired in a paperwork nightmare that took until the following fall to resolve. For about six years, town officials thought the entire parcel sat in a strictly commercial zone, but, it turns out, that was a mistake created on the town land records when they were converted over to the current electronic system.

A bit of research after a protest by an abutting property owner uncovered two separate zones that put the front two-thirds in a commercial zone and the back end of the property in a special residential zone, Vernon Economic Development Director Shaun Gately said.

The courts decided the most practical thing to do was to re-visit the regulatory process, since it was advertised erroneously, he added.

The plans were thus approved with some buffer added to the rear of the parcel. A special permit was been issued for the project as well as the zone change to commercial, Gately said. The small, single-family house behind the Lazy Liquor building was then taken down in late winter after the shop itself was razed.

The foundation was put down in May.