A proposed change to city code will directly address rules and requirements for drive-through lanes and may open the door to allow Taco Jake's to open a drive-through in the future.
Planning and zoning committee members voted to recommend the update to existing driveway city code during their meeting on Tuesday. The proposed changes will go before the city board on Oct. 15.
Senior planner Ben Rhoads said the deficiencies in the existing driveway codes came up when Taco Jake's was denied a variance for a drive-through lane last month. It became apparent that city code didn't address this aspect of commercial development, he wrote in a staff report to the planning commission.
"We basically treated drive-throughs like driveways, they do actually function differently and it doesn't make sense that you need them so wide if it's just for a single car coming in and out," Rhoads said.
The new code addresses drive-through lane design standards, such as surface material, width, stacking distance or the distance allowed for cars to line up at the window, landscaping, intersection with the street, lane markings, parking, pick-up and order window placement, and hours of operation.
Under the new requirements, drive-through lanes must be a minimum of 12-feet wide but may be reduced to 10-feet wide if the lane is next to another driveway or if the building is more than 20 years old and is less than 18 feet from the side property line.
"This provision is critical to prevent the issues encountered with the aforementioned restaurant (Taco Jake's)," Rhoads wrote in his report to the commission. "Staff believes this provision will open up commercial buildings that could be converted to restaurants."
Stacking is another key provision because some newer restaurants have created lines that disturbed traffic flow on U.S. Highway 412, the report states. Businesses must allow 100 feet of stacking space that does not occupy the public right-of-way for cars to line up. Non-food or non-beverage businesses may reduce this space to 60 feet, the proposed code states
The drive-through lanes will not justify a reduction in the number of parking spaces required, the code states. In addition, drive-through windows are prohibited from facing the street or if a building is on a corner, they are prohibited from facing the side with the most heavily trafficked street. Facilities that use an electronic speaker system and are within 100 feet of any residential property are restricted to operating between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., the code states.
"The general intent with these rules is to minimize the overall impact that these would have on surrounding properties by requiring landscaping, limited hours, demarcating lanes, etcetera," Rhoads said. "We really feel like this is our best effort we can put forth at this time -- we can always change it later -- to begin to address some of these issues that begin to come around with these functions."
Rhoads said he consulted with other city codes and met with a restaurant owner and engineer while developing the code changes.
The board of adjustments denied Taco Jake's a drive-through variance for its building, located at 403 U.S. Highway 412 W., during its Aug. 13 meeting. Owner Jacob Frese applied for an updated variance and closed the business indefinitely in early September as he awaited a decision on the matter.
In Frese' original request, the driveway that would have wrapped around the building to create a drive-through that would encroach into 5 of the required 6 feet of the green space buffer, leaving a 1.2 foot clearance from the edge of the property line to the drive-through, according to staff reports for the Aug. 13 meeting. City staff agreed with Frese that this situation was a hardship since the building was built parallel to U.S. Highway 412 instead of parallel to the east and west property lines like neighboring properties, the report stated.
Frese originally planned to present updated plans at the Oct. 8 board of adjustments meeting but has withdrawn his variance request to see if the code changes will pass, Rhoads said.
While the Taco Jake's situation brought the code deficiencies to light, the amendments are not related to the business and the business is not requesting the change, Rhoads said.
"We are doing this because we recognized there are some deficiencies with code because as the community grows, zoning gets more and more complex," he said.
The code changes also don't mean that Taco Jake's drive-through lane will automatically be approved, but it would open the door for potential approval in the future, Rhoads said.
"There are other things they would have to do on the property to make sure ingress is OK, there are other things we have to look at," he said.
In other business, the planning and zoning committee took the following actions:
• Approved a preliminary plat development permit for property at 2603 S. Lincoln St. owned by Javier and Claudia Chavez.
• Approved a final plat development permit for the 200 Block of N. Simon Sager Ave. owned by Cale Properties, LLLP.
• Heard a report about a lot split development permit approved by staff at 3990 U.S. Hwy. 412 E.
The board of adjustments, which meets at the same time and consists of the same members as the planning and zoning committee, took the following action:
• Approved a no-outlet street length variance request for property at 2603 S. Lincoln St., owned by Javier and Claudia Chavez.
General News on 10/13/2019