Battle against A&W drive-thru ends with settlement
Settlement reached over A&W plan that neighbours fought, with some change
KITCHENER — The Ontario Municipal Board has approved a zoning change that allows an A&W drive-thru to go in on a vacant lot at Strasburg Road and Ottawa Street, next to single-family homes.
At a board hearing Wednesday at Kitchener City Hall, the municipal board accepted a mediated settlement that essentially allows the same development turned down by council on Feb. 27.
The settlement means the 24-hour drivethru can go ahead at 751 Ottawa St. S. , in pretty much the same form as developer Ben Kooh of Cambridge proposed eight months ago.
The agreement puts the restaurant close to the intersection, 20 metres from the property line of the nearest home on Strasburg and 25 metres from other homes on Roberts Crescent, which back onto the site. Kooh also agreed to put up an eight-foot (2.4-metre) wooden fence — only a 1.8-metre fence is required — and concrete medians to prevent left turns into the site from Ottawa.
Kooh said he expects construction to begin by spring at the latest, with the A&W open for business by summer 2018.
Some residents strongly opposed the drive-thru, saying it was too close to homes and would bring problems such as noise, light pollution, smells and fumes from idling cars. They also worried about traffic safety, with cars turning in to the restaurant very close to a busy intersection.
Other residents thought a drive-thru restaurant was better than the gas station, car-wash and drive-thru allowed under the previous zoning.
Resident Mel Shaughnessy-Daub, who lives next door to the site and who led the effort to oppose the drive-thru, had called on council to enact stiffer rules for drive-thru restaurants, with greater minimum distances from homes and tougher regulations for landscaping.
She and her husband hired a planner to fight the proposal and participated in the dispute resolution effort, but ultimately signed off on the negotiated settlement.
“We just didn’t have enough money to fight them.”
It was the first time in Kitchener that a municipal board dispute has ever been resolved through alternative dispute resolution.
“It was a good experiment,” said Larry Tansley, the lawyer representing the city. “It’s the first time the city has used that technique and it worked out well” and avoided a full municipal board hearing.
Using a facilitator rather than having a full hearing didn’t lead to a decision any more quickly, said Denise Baker, the lawyer representing Kooh’s company.
The city, the appellant and the Daubs’ planner hashed out a settlement in a single evening with the help of a facilitator. Kitchener council ratified the settlement at a meeting in June. It then took 3 ½ months to get a hearing before the municipal board, Baker said.
Mechanisms like a telephone conference call for getting board approval of the settlement could have speeded things up, she said.
“It’s not as quick, in my opinion, as was the intention of the legislation for an expedited process,” she said.
“We’re where we were eight months ago,” Kooh said. The eight-month delay added tens of thousands of dollars in extra costs, he said.