Drive-thru for proposed Town bank seems dead, per FMPC reflections
“I’m inclined not to support the text amendment,” Commissioner Jon Greene said. “All the points made (by Community Development director Mark Shipley) are valid. It’s not like we really need another bank.”
However, Commissioner Noah Myers said he is ambivalent toward the request.
“I don’t see any difference between this (revised drive-thru plan) and the ATM,” Myers said. “I’m not in favor of government picking winners and losers and deciding when we are saturated with banks. … I don’t think it’s our job to determine whether we want a restaurant or a bank.”
While the applicant did revise its plan regarding the drive-thru, staff and Commissioners did not agree the revision was enough.
However, attorney Taylor Forester, speaking on behalf of the applicants and White Realty, which is the property owner, said “the present text is ambiguous as its written.
“The pertinent language that results in ambiguity is the prohibition that says ‘drive-thru service lanes and windows are not allowed,’” Forester read. “There’s no further description or explanation included that involves what is considered to be a drive-thru service lane or a window. Even the term drive-thru is not a defined term in the Farragut ordinances.”
Additionally, Davis Overton, senior vice president with White Realty, said his company bought the property, which includes Village Green shopping center, in 1964.
“We’ve been there for 50 years,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Overton said the company never asked for its property to be part of the MUTC district and preferred the property be taken out of the district.
“We did talk about this at the October Planning Commission meeting,” Shipley said.
“The request is to provide for a drive-thru service lane window for financial banks and real estate services. In the Mixed Use Town Center (district) portion of the Town, as you know, currently drive-thrus are restricted to establishments serving food and beverage and only on lots of record that are at least 2 acres,” he added. “And then, there’re a lot of conditions, even with those, to lessen the scale of the building and the drive-thrus.
“The area they are looking at is to the immediate west of Campbell Station Inn, off Kingston Pike. He pointed out there are three banks in the immediate vicinity that have traditional drive-thru lanes.”
However, “the staff indicated we would not support an amendment (to allow drive-thrus) for a number of reasons,” Shipley said. They are:
• Incompatibility with the Town’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan. “Changing the language to allow for an auto-oriented use is not consistent with the desired built environment we are looking for in the Mixed Use Town Center,” Shipley said, explaining the MUTC District is more pedestrian-oriented with places to gather.
“Particularly in this context, with it being to the west of McGill Plaza, where we would probably try to encourage some kind of use that would complement that (pedestrian activity) happening and the Plaza and what will be happening at Campbell Station Inn,” he added.
• Incompatibility with the Town’s strategic plan, involving “enhancing the Town’s financial position ... because we do rely so much on sales tax, there’s a statement in there to identify potential retailers to increase local sales tax,” Shipley said.
He added changing the language for a ban would not meet the strategic plan’s standard for promoting retail businesses.
• “As Chase Bank complied with the Town’s requirement to not have a drive-thru, allowing another bank in the MUTC district to have one would be inconsistent with being consistent,” Shipley said.
• “If you take the surrounding context into consideration, you could have a lot of potentially bad precedents to these amendments with the Mixed Use Town Center,” he added
