Milton planners table vote on McDonald’s site plans

For the second time in as many meetings, the preliminary site-plan application by McDonald’s to build a 4,000-square-foot restaurant at the corner of Route 16 and Union Street Extended has been tabled due to issues raised about both the design and traffic impacts. 

Milton Planning and Zoning Commission tabled the application Feb. 21, but left the record open to allow McDonald’s to submit additional information to answer questions from the commission.

While the commission made a number of requests to be included in the site plan, the biggest issues remain the effect the McDonald’s will have on traffic in an already busy area, and having a corporate Goliath such as McDonald’s in a town that likes its commercial businesses to be of the more mom-and-pop variety. 

The proposed restaurant would comprise 60 seats, 39 angled parking spaces, drive-thru windows, landscaping, lighting and other improvements, and would operate from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days per week. 

While McDonald’s representatives have said they tried to make the look of the restaurant fit in with the existing shopping center, Commissioner Jeff Seemans was unimpressed.

“I’m just underwhelmed by this,” he said. “I think very little effort has been made to try to do a good job with this. It just looks like a standard plan pulled out of a computer. This is just a standard, stock architecture for a 4,000-square-foot box.”

Seemans added that should the McDonald’s go forward, it would be Milton’s largest free-standing restaurant. McDonald’s representatives have said that 70% of McDonald’s business comes from drive-thru service. Seemans said if that is the case, why does McDonald’s need a 4,000-square-foot restaurant?

Chair Richard Trask added, “It’s important to people in Milton that you’re part of this town and not just a box sitting on a commercial lot.”

Also at issue is the question of traffic. The restaurant would utilize the existing entrances and exits to the Food Lion shopping center. The McDonald’s site was included in Delaware Department of Transportation studies related to a proposed Royal Farms on the other side of Union Street Extended. Built into the Royal Farms project is the addition of turn lanes and other road improvements, at Royal Farms’ expense. 

McDonald’s engineer Steve Fortunato said the DelDOT study found that McDonald’s is above the threshold for having to put in any road improvements, and the effect on traffic at the intersection of Route 16 and Union Street Extended is about a one-second delay. Fortunato said McDonald’s did research that found the Milton restaurant would generate about 700 trips per day at the busiest of times. 

Seemans said he was shocked that McDonald’s, which would generate a lot of traffic, was not required to put in any intersection improvements.

“I don’t know how McDonald’s can come into this part of the world and not make any improvements to that lighted intersection given the hundreds and hundreds of trips that are coming into this site,” he said.

Fortunato said the reason Royal Farms had to put in improvements was because they are adding an access point and the geometry of getting into their site. 

Still, Seemans and Commissioner Maurice McGrath said the traffic study does not show a true picture of what the traffic situation will be on a broader scale, measuring traffic in two-hour increments instead of a longer period.

The commission will resume discussion of the McDonald’s site plan at its next meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, March 21.