The high-rise McDonald’s sign will remain for the time being, but the proposed big American flag at the new Belle Tire will be reduced in size.
These were among decisions made by the Van Buren Township Planning Commission at its regular meeting April 11.
McDonald’s wants to renovate the exterior and upgrade the site at its location on Belleville Road and agreed to remove the pedestal sign in the front and replace it with a monument sign, as long as its menu boards in the back and the signs atop the new canopy can remain in place.
McDonald’s agreed to repaint the brick building in the color approved by the township (brown instead of red), changes to landscape traffic islands and put new plantings in front, along with a bike rack and bench.
The township is developing a cross-access agreement model and McDonald’s will be the first to use it, said Terry Carroll, VBT director of planning and economic development. This way, the businesses will deal with the township for access agreements instead of negotiating with each other, he said.
McDonald’s plans to have an entry/exit at the back of the site so customers can come and go from the shopping center behind. McDonald’s was negotiating with the shopping center owner.
Carroll said the back curb cut could be six months from now or six years from now or, “Could be never.”
In the future, McDonald’s plans to close the southernmost curb cut onto Belleville Road and widen the northern entryway. The new traffic flow was considered by the planning commission, but will be addressed later.
Ken Van Tine, architect for McDonald’s, and Gary Winbush, operations manager for 29 McDonald’s locations, negotiated with the planning commission and agreed to put bricks around the pedestal bases of the menu boards in back to make them into monument signs, but not the order board.
But changing the canopy with signs over the order lanes was difficult because it would be too expensive for McDonald’s to make a special order for this one store.
The planning commission voted unanimously to recommend to the township board special land-use approval for a drive-in restaurant (there’s no VBT category for drive-through).
The planners then voted unanimously to grant preliminary site plan approval. Once all the approvals are in place, the McDonald’s project is expected to take six weeks this summer.
Planning commission chairman Carol Thompson said she did a poll about the high-rise McDonald’s sign and some people didn’t even notice it was there. Others said it was “old school, an old way of doing things.” She said young people just use their Smart phone to find locations of restaurants.
Thompson said she would like to see it come down in the future.
Winbush said when the sign was down for repairs recently, the store saw a significant drop in sales. He said there was a double-digit decrease when the sign was down.
“Thanks for telling me that,” Thompson replied. “We want all of our businesses to do well.”
Treasurer Sharry Budd said she doesn’t have a problem with the sign, but then added that she’s probably “old school”. Budd said she looks for the sign when traveling to pinpoint the location of the restaurant.
Van Tine said he knows there are freeway signs, but he wants to know it’s right there at the exit, not several miles away. He’ll go on to the next exit if he can’t see exactly where it is.
Also, at the April 11 meeting, the commission approved the final site plan for Belle Tire construction at 10595 Belleville Road, just north of Express Tire.
Chris Enright, architect representing Belle Tire, agreed to downsizing the usual American flag from xx to 18×12’, two-thirds smaller than usual because township planning consultant Sally Hodges said the smaller flag was in better proportion to the building.
Wade Trim engineering consultant Dave Nummer said there was concern about what would happen if electricity went off to the pump station for the pond at the back of the property, so Belle Tire has agreed to a light and alarm to alert the public that the generator needs to be turned on.
Commissioner Ken Guenther, who lives on xx behind the Belle Tire site, had concerns about the wall at the back of the property with a 4” gap underneath.
Nummer said that was an engineering requirement so the residential lots behind can drain to the lower elevation at the Belle Tire site.
Guenther said water always drained into residential lots there and he asked if they would promise the Belle Tire site would be lower. Enright replied, “I promise.”
For both the McDonald’s and Belle Tire sites, Batallion Chief Dan Besson had done reviews of the plans for the fire department and the commission praised his detailed comments.
Carroll said some of the things pointed out were actually building permit issues and should have come from the building department. Carroll promised a “shakeup” on future reviews.
The commission will hold a special workshop meeting at 6 p.m., April 19, to consider the noise protocol and other issues connected to the request for a landfill-gas-to-electrical-energy plant on the Visteon property.