Consider the impact of a Long Beach-restaurant drive-thru. Customers queue in their cars to order food, idle an average of four minutes while it is prepared and drive away with filled bags. In the process, their cars create traffic and emit air and noise pollutants, reducing area residents’ quality of life.
Also, consumers who carelessly discard drive-thru products contribute to curbside trash, and the additional space taken by drive-thru lanes potentially displaces needed housing and grocery stores with fresh-food options.
Long Beach has 116 drive-thru restaurants– 22% of them in North Long Beach, according to the Department of Development Services.
But the City has formulated new steps to mitigate problems associated with drive-thrus, and all within the past year.
Following public complaint early in 2019– mostly from a coalition of advocates, including Walk Long Beach (WLB), the Long Beach Alliance for Food and Fitness (LBAFF), the Coalition for a Healthy North Long Beach and the United Cambodian Community– voicing alarm at the proliferation of drive-thrus over the past five years, the Long Beach City Council imposed a moratorium on new drive-thru applications beginning in April.
The council ended that moratorium in July by adopting an ordinance amending drive-thru regulations, which the City had not updated in 20 years.
Based on that ordinance, Development Services created a new policy document called Design Guidelines for Drive-Through Facilities that the Planning Commission approved at its Oct. 3 meeting.
Linda Tatum, director of development services, shared the new guidelines with Acting City Manager Tom Modica in a Dec. 24, 2019 memo.
The guidelines state that businesses requesting a conditional-use permit (CUP) for a drive-thru must “minimize the impacts on pedestrians, safety, traffic and queuing, noise, lighting, air pollution and aesthetics associated with [its] use.”
In addition, before the City grants a CUP, the guidelines state that it must weigh the benefit of a drive-thru at that location against using the land more productively.
“The findings […] aim to evaluate the opportunity cost or ‘trade-offs’ of allowing a drive-through use instead of housing or other commercial uses that further the City’s housing and economic-development goals,” the policy states.
The guidelines also steer applicants to choose shopping-center-and freeway-adjacent locations rather than areas more appropriate for housing.
“Avoid locations in transit-oriented and other areas where more intense development is permitted, thus better serving Long Beach with additional housing and employment uses,” the guidelines suggest to applicants.
Successful applicants must also be willing to enhance the surrounding area of the drive-thru business, such as with lighting, plants, trees and trellises.
“New drive-throughs and expansions of existing drive-through facilities should be designed to ensure compatibility with adjacent uses, enhance the streetscape frontage, provide adequate buffers, ensure safe pedestrian accessibility and include outdoor amenities to service patrons,” the guideline states.
Some of the drive-thru design considerations endorsed by the Long Beach Department of Development Services in its new Design Guidelines for Drive-Through Facilities, approved by the Planning Commission on Oct. 3.
It also promotes building and design considerations that minimize the impact on pedestrians and bicyclists and curtail noise to the surrounding community.
Public response to the new guidelines expressed before and during the Oct. 3 Planning-Commission meeting was mixed, with some appreciating the policy’s consideration of pedestrians, surrounding communities and promoting businesses, while others objected to its limitations.
Kate Sachnoff of LBAFF stated in a letter to the commission that her organization supported the updated policy.
“Our interest in this is two-fold: having streetscapes that encourage physical activity, and having local restaurant options that serve healthy foods and beverages,” she said.
However, others objected to the City continuing to allow auto emissions from drive-thru idling.
“Additional drive-thrus should not be allowed to be built at all in Long Beach,” resident Michael Clemson wrote to the commission before the meeting. “The construction of new car-focused infrastructure should not be permitted at a time when the reduction [of] driving, as […] Long Beach’s largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions, is an urgent need.”
Clemson also noted that the guidelines say nothing about reducing the number of fast-food restaurants in low-income communities. According to its March 21 recommendations to City Council, reducing “food swamps”– areas with a high concentration of unhealthy food choices– was one of the Planning Commission’s original goals in revising the policy, based on community input.
WLB also sent a written statement to the commission that the City’s guidelines could be more specific about evaluating the opportunity cost of using the land for drive-thrus and parking versus other uses.
“It can be expanded upon to include provisions of healthy food options, walkability, [and] environmental/nuisance impacts to existing uses,” WLB stated.
Steve Gerhardt, WLB’s executive director, asked during the meeting about how the City evaluates those opportunity costs.
Patricia Diefenderfer, advance-planning officer, responded that the guidelines allow the City to deny an application if planners find that the site could be more densely developed for housing or another economic-development goal.
“This is also anticipating the adoption of the land-use element [currently under environmental review],” Diefenderfer said. “The land-use element identifies a number of corridors and transit-oriented […] areas for mixed-use development as a means to accommodate the city’s housing needs.”
In addition to sharing the updated guidelines in her Dec. 24 memo, Tatum also addressed new eatery-related issues caused by online food-ordering, particularly parking.
“Fast-food restaurants are experiencing an exponential increase in business generated on smartphones and other devices where the purchase occurs online,” she states. “This trend represents non-traditional parking challenges for the retailers and unanticipated regulatory issues for the City.”
Tatum notes that while some establishments reserve parking spaces near their entrances for drive-thru customers who have to wait additional time for orders, and food-delivery services such as Uber Eats, such parking is not regulated under the Long Beach Municipal Code (LBMC).
“The LBMC lacks requirements regarding the number of designated parking spaces for e-commerce customers because the current zoning code was last updated prior to the emergence of the internet and online commerce,” she notes.
Therefore, such parking permissions are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, considering whether the designated spaces reduce the restaurant’s overall parking requirement or not, Tatum says. She suggests that the code needs to be overhauled but the City may not yet have the resources to do so.
“Development Services will continue to monitor these trends and adjust policies and procedures in a manner […] supportive of the City’s land-use and transportation goals,” Tatum noted. “[It will be revised] at a future date, and as part of a larger code-update, when funds are identified.”
