City Council Meeting

Albert Frederickstaffto the previously approved 2017 general development plan the applicant is the contract leasing for parcel d which is the vacant pad site within the shopping center today parcel d remains a vacant pad site as approved and under the 2008 plan no changes to the previously approved proffers and no changes to the existing conditions to the shop and Center the shop the shop center has approximately 119 parking spaces so the existing conditions the subject property the larger parcel parcel a is 2.4 acres the parcel D which is a site for Taco Bell is 0.66 acres in the commercial corridor place type and the commercial retail zoning district and the architectural control overlay district so before you are pictures of the subject property looking at the streetscape

shopping center to the interior to an interposter connection from patient first heading west through the shopping center the a traffic analysis was provided and the level of service for the adjacent streets will not experience any significant degradation and operating conditions with this construction of the proposed Taco Bell here's an aerial view that shows the nearest location of the nearest residential lot to the proposed site it's roughly 450 to 500 feet to the north the map before you shows the existing drive-throughs throughout the city and also the proposed drive-through the map shows the location of approximately 12 existing drive-through restaurants in the city and eight of those restaurants have a residential lot

Kathryn Taylorapplicantgoals including promoting walkability and improving improving pedestrian safety and connections. So if we go to the next slide, I believe we talked about this before, but just to remind the council, it's important to note that the main vehicular routes to the site were previously contemplated by the property owners of both the patient first site as well as the larger shopping center. And so there is a cross access easement that was executed in 2015 by all of the property owners. owners. You can see the patient site in green, Taco Bell in blue, and the larger shopping center in red. The agreement effectively permits a shared access between all three parcels. So we do believe the access being proposed, as you heard from staff, is consistent with

Where you can see that on this graphic with the green star is where we would work with transportation staff to figure out the best way to integrate signage. This would inform drivers to turn at that first intersection across the larger shopping center. To then get the Taco Bell rather than passing it, going to the second intersection at Fairwoods Parkway. first to have to enter the site. So we hope that that will effectively lessen the number of cars that may conflict with pedestrians that may be going to the patient first site. So if we go to the next slide, I did want to take some time. Again, we just heard so many concerns about whether a new restaurant with a drive-through component could effectively integrate into a busy already busy shopping center.

And we do believe that it can. I've just provided a few data points about the proposed operation as mentioned we heard that the hours of operation may be too late we have changed that the drive-through will now close at 12 a.m. as opposed to 2 a.m. we have integrated that walk-up window that would be open only from 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. on a daily basis there is a small window during the dinner peak hours which for where the Taco Bell is 530 to 7 p.m. typically. That may overlap with the main dinner rush of the various sit-down restaurants. But unlike those establishment, Taco Bell is not historically a sit-down type restaurant and thereby not expected to greatly impact or aggravate that existing parking issue of the overall shopping center.

Rather, as we've mentioned before, the drive-through usage is approximately 80% to 85% of the customers that come to Taco Bell. Only 15 to 20% are actually coming in to dine. As a result, the majority of visitors are using the drive-thru. They are not parking. On average, a drive-thru visit, Taco Bell prides themselves on it being very quick, where they do have a measured goal of keeping it under three minutes. To break that down, the order time is approximately 49 seconds on average, when a customer places an order at the menu board to when they pass it. So that equates to about one vehicle every minute passing the menu board. So this quickness and speed at which people are receiving their food has two important implications.

One, patrons are just simply not in the drive through for very long. So they're moving through that very quickly. And we believe that this assists to alleviate concerns related to there not being any kind of bypass lane within the drive through. And then secondly, patrons are moving quickly in and out of the site and will not spend a significant amount of time attempting to circulate the shopping center or idling around in the drive aisles as many do when they're trying to locate a parking spot. That being said, Taco Bell has been thoughtful of the drive-through design at this location to ensure that its drive-through operations would have minimal impact to the pre-existing vehicular circulation conditions of the overall shopping center.

typically across most taco bells they operate systems that only have a 16 camera 16 cameras on with within the site in a limited number of locations they will integrate a 24 camera system And usually that's when there are significant safety concerns at a site. While there are no major safety concerns here, to increase its ability to monitor and manage that drive through and the surrounding area, the applicant is willing to install that 24 camera system. And this will allow them to monitor and capture every angle of the drive through in order to preempt and control any possible disruption in that drive through line. Furthermore, we're going to work with city staff. We're looking in the fire marshal to look at possibly integrating any appropriate signage.

another sit-down restaurant which is double the size of what this proposal would be so I emphasize that in any of those scenarios the parking demand for a comparable by right use or in other words would not require City Council approval could be much higher because if it was another sit-down restaurant they are definitely parking and so while the taco bell i admit will inevitably generate more traffic and utilize more parking spaces than its current empty condition it would have we argue a less parking impact than a buy right use or a retail or a sit-down restaurant so i've just provided a little some numbers here as you can see the parking time if someone were to come to the taco bell would

to 15 minutes, whereas if it's any type of retail or sit-down restaurant, you have people staying there for 30 minutes to two hours. And then in the next kind of chart that you can see there, our traffic engineer did do ransom quick numbers. As you can see from the chart, a Taco Bell restaurant will generate a much lower parking demand than any approved by right use, where that parking demand would be higher and in some instances double. And again, this is looking at that peak dinner time, which I know is the most concerning for the shopping center when parking is the most scarce. So if we go to the next slide, this is just a graphic depiction of what I just discussed. The Taco Bell is the orange.

We do believe that the redevelopment of this pad site will hopefully maximize the revenue generation that could be realized on this very small pad site that is separately owned from the larger shopping center currently the applicant is negotiating a 20-year lease with the property owner with four additional five-year lease options after the initial lease term is up so while the overall investment value that you can see on this slide of the project is roughly 2.5 million the real estate valuation for tax purposes of the property post development of the land by the market value of the Taco Bell 20 year lease and the credit rating of the Taco Bell operator, which will effectively place the highest possible valuation on the property.

So in other words, the valuation is calculated by taking the annual rent and multiplying it by the appropriate capitalization rate. In this instance, by applying this formula, the real estate valuation is anticipated to be approximately 2.3 million, which would result in an increase of 1 million from the current assessed value for property tax purposes. As to the meals tax contribution, this is estimated to be 80,000 per year to the city, which is approximately 1.6 million over the 20 year lease term. If the lessee does choose to pursue the lease options and those are exercised, that potentially could be up to 3.2 million. And lastly, from a broader perspective, as staff noted, the benefits that this Taco Bell would bring to the city far exceed annual tax revenues.

Specifically, it is expected that this Taco Bell would bring 30 full and part time jobs within the city. So as you can see, despite the small size of this site and proposal, the proposed development will actively activate an empty idle site and will generate increased economic activity and contribute positively to the city's continued fiscal growth as a community serving commercial use that is supported by its commercial corridor land use designation. The next slide just talks about, we've already discussed most of this, but this is the community outreach that we've done. We did meet with the Mosby Woods community the first time in person here at City Council Room and then also on 22nd, which was a Zoom meeting.

Thomas Meccapublic commentThey're still going to go into the parking lot any way they want. There's a lot of reserved spaces already for 10-minute parking because there's various restaurants like the Pizza Place, Subway, etc. that need customers who will come to pick up the food, and so they separated 10-minute parking area already. and so parking is going to be an issue no matter what you put up there to control the traffic it's a very limited space there's a lot of traffic on peak hours it's going to be a mess it's just going to interfere it's going to make everything worse originally i came to the council years ago opposing the development of that spot as a shopping center so here i am again arguing an addition which is Taco Bell again the city unfortunately lost a great

restaurant in Esposito for another not so good proposal and so the acceptance of a Taco Bell which is not the most nutritious of places to eat I don't think it's a great addition for the city but that's a that's a different different point the bottom line is that this space is just gonna make traffic worse into mostly woods on fairfax boulevard is is not going to help the already existing restaurants and other venues there it's just going to make it much worse alternative proposal if you go to the site on an evening where there's a lot of folks there they use this space as a parking area why because there's no parking and so you're going to add are you going to reserve bill and not for the other places it's not going to work they just said that their place is mostly

Kathryn Taylorapplicantand we do have our applicant operator here i think that they can speak one from their experience at other taco bells and i won't i'll let him kind of go into the details of that but i also know that taco bell as a friend because this would be a franchise as a franchisee they have certain metrics that they need to meet that directly play into that drive-through operation and making sure it stays at a certain level and so even after year one two three those metrics for that um for that facility is not going to change and so the i do believe it would be ongoing and it's running fine we're going to stop monitoring it so um if you would like to come up

Speaker 15good evening so as part of our taco bell franchise agreement that we have with yum brands taco bell we have to be able to maintain certain standards and those standards are the 330 drive-through that she brought up earlier as we try to push as many cars through the drive-through that throughput is how we're going to be able to capture revenue be able to take care So that's one of our primary goals is as fast as we can move customers through the better. The concern of a backup. Historically speaking, when you look at we operate 133 locations across six states. So we don't want to have any backups at any given time. Not only does it cause a bottleneck for our customers, our neighbors, et cetera, but it

Jeffrey GreenfieldThank you, Mayor. I appreciate your answer. I think we're going to get at this two ways. One, Taco Bell accountability, but two, if the maker of the motion tonight is amenable to an additional condition that I will add, we will have a condition as part of the special use permit that will require them to monitor this on an annual basis to ensure, on a daily basis. but it is a condition of approval. If they get to a point that they are out of compliance, technically their special use permit could be revoked to operate because they aren't adhering to that condition. So I think you've got two different sides to try to work this issue of stacking.

Billy Batesyou i um i think it's important to note that we do have a development that has been previously approved for this site and as the applicant noted it is projected to lead to an even greater demand on parking than the current development proposal and additionally the applicant has gone far above and beyond, over twice the tree canopy requirement, and, you know, that is certainly, I think, a great benefit for the city as well. And not to mention that a Taco Bell does still provide something of a destination for pedestrians and bicyclists, whereas something else like a, you know an auto service oriented use wouldn't necessarily and so for those reasons you know all this use certainly is not my dream scenario for this site I'm happy to support the proposal

Jeffrey GreenfieldAnd so do we want to say we aren't going to allow anything here because of the sins of the success of the rest of the shopping center? you when we when we approved the the original multi-tenant shopping center it wasn't envisioned with restaurants that would be as many sit downs as there are there today and that's the challenge that we have with a shopping center so it's certainly something for for the next council and staff to think about as there are other multi-tenant shopping centers what happens if someone goes in they still have to meet parking requirements but this entire center to include in front of Taco Bell are all shared spaces. So there is no dedicated parking for Taco Bell. There is no dedicated parking for the Crab House, you know,

any of the sushi restaurant that's brand new, the Korean barbecue on the other end. And the list goes on and on and on, right? And so it becomes a struggle. But, again, do we want to have this site sit empty or do we want to recognize that whatever was going to go in there the ability to have a drive-through. That was done with a bank. But we have some say here in what we can put in, and hence the development condition that was added for this, hence the reduced hours of the drive-through, hence the reduced footprint of Taco Bell, this site, compared to what they do as a standard. That's what happens when we go this route versus what you get by right. And so I, for those reasons, it's something we're going to have to continue as a partnership between the shopping center and the city to continue to monitor.