Cheesecake Factory Coming to Quaker Bridge Mall?

Representatives of Indiana-based Simon Property Group appeared before the Lawrence Township Planning Board Screening Committee this afternoon (Thursday, Sept. 29) to discuss a site plan application for the construction of a new 8,916-square-foot restaurant attached to Quaker Bridge Mall.

As currently proposed, the new restaurant would have seating for 301 patrons – 235 seats inside and 66 outside in an enclosed patio area, according to attorney Jonathan Epstein of Drinker Biddle’s Princeton area law office.

It would be built along the west (Route 1) side of the mall adjacent to the mall entrance located between the Macy’s and J.C. Penney department stores. It will stand on the side of the entrance opposite where the Lawrence Grill now is.

The mall is still in negotiations with a major restaurant chain to occupy the new building and the name of that chain was never mentioned during the 4 p.m. public meeting today.

But after the meeting, when asked by Lawrenceville Patch if the restaurant in question was Cheesecake Factory, the executive vice president of development for Simon Property Group, Thomas Schneider, confirmed that negotiations were underway with Cheesecake Factory, “among others.”

During the meeting it was revealed that there would be an entrance into the new restaurant directly from the interior of the mall so that patrons need not go outside to enter the new building. Located at the front of the new restaurant will also be an area able to accommodate three vehicles where motorists can pull up for valet parking. Vehicles using that valet service will be parked in one of the lots on that side of the mall.

To accommodate the new restaurant, the mall would renovate the existing entrance to turn that area into a “pedestrian plaza,” eliminate more than 80 parking spaces, relocate some handicapped parking spaces, move a section of Inner Ring Road, install new pedestrian crosswalks and landscaping, and create an “impervious” area required for water drainage, according to Schneider and Doug Szabo, a senior engineer at Philadelphia-based engineering firm Pennoni Associates.

With the elimination of the parking spaces, Szabo said, the mall will be at 5.1 parking spaces per 1,000-square-feet – more than the required ratio of 4.5 spaces.

The site plan application is expected to be discussed before the township’s full Planning Board on Oct. 17.

Schneider said Simon Propery Group hopes, once all the necessary approvals are obtain from the township, to begin construction on the new restaurant in the spring of 2012, with work completed or near completion by the fall of that year.

Construction of the new restaurant is part of a significant expansion of Quaker Bridge Mall – including multiple stores, restaurants and parking garages – that has been in the planning stages for several years, but which has experienced several setbacks due to the economic downturn.

“At this point, the ultimate development for the mall expansion is still in a state of flux,” Epstein said during the meeting.