Geneva douses Dunkin' Donuts proposal
As much as some of them love Dunkin' Donuts coffee, Geneva aldermen indicated Monday that they won't approve plans to build a drive-up store in a west-side strip shopping center.
Traffic flow into and around the Pepper Valley Plaza on Kaneville Road can't safely accommodate it, they said.
They voted 9-0 Monday night, as a committee of the whole, against granting a special-use permit for the proposal. Alderman Dean Kilburg was absent.
They will take a binding vote Feb. 16.
Karim Khoja of Northshore Management Group had proposed to build the store at the west end of the building, in the space a bank with a drive-up lane once occupied. Plans called for drivers entering the shopping center from Cambridge Drive. Northshore operates more than 40 Dunkin' Donuts shops.
Alderman Tom Simonian said he grew up in the Northeast, where Dunkin' Donuts originated, and dislikes having to go to another town to buy the treats. And he wants to encourage businesses to open in Geneva, he said. But after spending time observing traffic at the intersection of Kaneville and Cambridge, he said he would support the proposal only if the center restricted all its entrances to right-in, right-out turns. And that, he noted, would defeat the petitioner's reason for putting the store there: to attract drive-up customers from Randall Road, which is just west of the center, and from Kaneville.
The plaza has a right-in, right-out entrance off Kaneville, but to access the drive-up from that, cars would have to leave the parking lot, turn left on to Cambridge, then turn left in to the drive-up driveway.
Residents of the Pepper Valley subdivision had strenuously objected to the proposal. They worried that drivers leaving the center would turn left and head north on Cambridge to avoid going back on to busy Randall during rush hour. They were also worried about noise from cars lining up and from people placing orders in the drive-up. They also worried about lights shining on to their properties in the early morning and at night.
The franchisee was willing to put up a sign asking drivers to turn their radios down when they rolled down their windows to place orders; to plant landscaping on both sides of the property line, with homeowners' permission, to make a buffer; to post a "no through traffic during rush hours" sign at Cambridge and pay for police to enforce that; and to close the drive-up from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
The council's permission is needed because the shopping center is in a planned-unit development that prohibits sit-down and drive-up restaurants. The council was asked first to amend the development plan to allow such restaurants in general and then to vote on letting Dunkin' Donuts move in.