Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, consider the appeals from John LaBelle, Carolyn LaBelle, Anita Hrishikesan and Jeff Bovernam, and Mark Nevin with 56 others, and uphold the decision of the Planning Commission to approve a Categorical Exemption (CE13-095), Site Plan Review and Conditional Use Permit to allow the demolition of two, one-story commercial buildings, and the construction of a 1,899-square-foot Dunkin’ Donuts ready-to-eat establishment with a drive-thru lane, located at 5560 East 7th Street in the CCA zoning district.  (District 3)
If you would, please stand for those who are going to testify in this case. Do you and each of you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in this course now pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and now turn this over to city staff. Vice mayor, councilmembers. I'm going to turn this over to our development services director, Ms.. Amy Bodak, and she'll give us a staff report on this item. Vice Member and Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. Thank you for your attention to this public hearing item tonight. It is related to an appeal of a decision by the Planning Commission related to the construction of a ready to eat establishment with a drive thru on Seventh Street in the third District. I would like to go to the next slide, please, which will just show you a site plan of the location of the business. In February of 2014, the Planning Commission heard conducted a public hearing related to a site plan review and approval of a conditional use permit for a drive thru. This request did generate some public comment related to mostly the signage that exists on site. Today there is a, for lack of a better word, a giant donut sign that exists at the site today. And there was a number of public comments received in February related to the sign and requests that this type of signage be incorporated into the eventual site plan of the new facility. Additionally, there were concerns raised about traffic and the Planning Commission directed staff to add conditions of approval to address both the thematic sign and to address some of the concerns related to potential traffic impacts due to the project and its configuration of the site. A staff came back to the Planning Commission in March and there was an additional public hearing that was continued to the March Planning Commission meeting. At that time, there were a number of folks who spoke out against the project related to traffic impacts. Staff did proceed to point out to the Planning Commission the changes that were made to the conditions of approval, and the Planning Commission ultimately approved the project. I would point out that this is a project that is an existing drive thru donut facility business and an existing vacant building that used to be a liquor store. Those two facilities are going to be torn down. Any new, new donut shop by Dunkin Donuts would be constructed on the screen behind you as a site plan of the facility. And if we can go to the next slide, it would show you the site plan in its location as it's currently designed and configured because it required ACP for the drive thru. Staff was very concerned about the impacts of the drive thru and directed the business to orient the drive thru against Seventh Street in order to avoid any potential impacts to the neighborhood. The drive thru was also originally presented, was too short and did not meet our current standards for stacking in a drive thru. So the project was also modified to to make the drive thru long enough. In addition, part of the conditions of approval require the closure of three of the four existing curb cuts on seventh Street and consolidate all of the traffic entering and exiting the site either through one entrance exit on seventh Street in conjunction with an existing alley, or orienting, exiting and entering off of Flint Avenue and then proceeding on to Seventh Street. Additionally, as I said, there was a condition of approval that was added to retain the thematic donut sign and eventually incorporate that into the site plan. And there was a condition of approval that was required, which was eventually approved that would require the applicant to work with the traffic engineer in order to evaluate any potential impacts to traffic that may occur in the neighborhood. Once the facility was up and operating, it gives the traffic engineer the discretion to go in later and modify some of the traffic patterns to prevent impacts to the neighborhood. The proposed project will significantly improve this busy corridor. It will remove two non-conforming existing uses. It will result in improvements to the public alley. It will, in addition, as I said, closed three of the four existing curb cuts along Seventh Street and will result in a new approximately 1900 square foot modern facility. For those reasons, the Planning Commission did approve the project. There were four appeals filed within a timely manner. And we are we are required by a municipal code to present this hearing to you within 60 days of the appeals being filed. The first appeal was received on March 13th. Hence, we are here today to schedule the hearing. We do have a number of appellants, but they are grouped into four separate appeals. And so with that I would close my staff report, remain available with the zoning administrator and the traffic engineer to answer specific questions, but then allow the the appellants to speak if that's the the wish of the council. That concludes my staff report. Okay. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and move on to the appellants and Mr. City attorney. How did you. Did you want to have all four different appellants or the grouping of the four appellant speak? What was your preference? I don't think we discussed a preference with the appellants. I think they've organized themselves into four separate groups so they could just approach the podium one group at a time if that's how they want to do it. Okay. So one of the one of the four appellant groups come forward. Mr. Mays on for each group. Are you thinking 5 to 10 minutes per group? Our code. Allows for a reasonable time. And I would hope that they could do it no more than ten per. Group. Okay, so let's try to go between this notes between five and 10 minutes per propellant group. Okay. So if you don't have 5 minutes as well, that's that's okay. Whatever time you'd like to please. Or need 5 minutes. I'm John LaBelle. I live at 636 Ultimo. The plan is for this fast food restaurant. Thinly disguised as a food ready to eat. Restaurant as it is constructed now is going to have very detrimental impact on our neighborhood. The primary problem. With this plan. Is that as this project, as it is planned right now, is that the fast food takeout window directs the traffic down our alley. Right now, my security camera has recorded over the past couple of months that we get 14 cars a day down that alley. Mr. Steven Valdez, in a telephone conversation, indicated that this alley could easily handle. 2 to 300 cars a day. And quite frankly, during. Rush hour, I expect. That the 14 cars a day will be exceeded in a few hours in the morning of operation. The problem is, is that getting back out onto. Seventh Street is very difficult. And because the curb cuts have been been reduced in this new development, it offers less opportunity to get out of the development. The the the plan. Is supposedly. Just like or the same hours what is there. But in fact, the traffic flow through it is completely different. The donut shop is about twice the size of the existing donut shop and the hours. Of operation are quite different. The existing donut shop provides for service from 530 in the morning to. 6:00 at night. This operation would like to be 24 hours and is indicating that the cut off will be at 10:00 at night. This alley that. Is between Flint and. Ultimo is very narrow, nine. And ten feet wide. It's there's no place to turn around in it. It's it's a dangerous and difficult alley. Bumping the traffic up to hundreds of cars a day is going to be hazardous. And I think that. If the city permits this to happen, the city should assume certain. Liabilities and responsibilities for the damage caused by traffic. Right now, the telephone poles and walls in this alley are sculpted by the collisions with cars and in traffic at 14 cars a day. I think this is a most unreasonable proposal and it needs to be changed. I'd like to see. That property developed. But this development as it is constructed or proposed at this point in time, is very unreasonable on the residents of. This residential. Community. That's it. For me. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. My name is Anita Ricci Kaysen, and my husband, Jeff Bowerman, and I live at 655 Ultimo Avenue. We filed our appeal because we are contesting the decision made by the Planning Commission. Some of this was repeated by Amy Burdick just a few minutes ago. That is the picture. The approval was based on the erroneous belief that the proposed project was similar to the existing site. Unfortunately, other decisions, including granting a categorical exception, followed this faulty premise. The reason we are here today is because these two sites are not similar and then the comparison chart is the next for the details. We prepared a. Hope. Oh. You know. Forget it. Comparison chart. It's the was the second one. We prepared a comparison chart for the details. And there is an excerpt from a memo from Amy Burdette regarding the decision. Can we get this together? This is not not the correct presentation. Okay. There it is. It was on the side. Just look at the right one for you, okay? The proposed project will be a high volume fast food site. It will produce increased pollution and noise to the neighborhood by having longer operating hours, hundreds of idling cars and delivery trucks arriving and leaving the intense volume of it. Business will impact traffic on seven, creating greater gridlock and extended wait time to even get through this intersection. It will make the right lane of seventh impassable for blocks. It will impact our neighborhood streets with cars cutting through, trying to avoid that congestion. Further, it will impede garage access, which John was just talking about. During two planning commission meetings, the developers stated that they anticipated at least 100 cars per hour or 400 cars during the peak commute times between six and 10 a.m.. The current volume at original ground is 25 cars per hour, as you can see, even with the conservative estimate of 100 cars per hour. The intensity of traffic can easily be 4 to 5 times greater than now. The following photos give you some idea of the congestion on Seventh Street that exists currently at this site. Cars now back up for at least 2 to 3 blocks during peak rush hour traffic. Cars entering this proposed drive thru waiting and idling will cause backup on the seventh and make again the right lane impassable. The next photo is taken from the crosswalk at Fleet Street looking down seventh Street. It only takes two cars to block Flint Street and the site exit. If there's a pedestrian crossing at seventh and PCH, the right lane is stopped. If a bus is stopped at the seventh and Bellflower bus stop, cars back into the intersection. Now there's gridlock, preventing cars from passing along in the right hand lane. These are all existing conditions at this extremely congested intersection before a fast food drive-thru is even in place. We have three maps which we can just really whip through. The first map shows the stop points on seventh when cars turn into the drive thru and the next stop point at Flint and PCH. The second view shows some routes to drivers who will use to cut through our neighborhood to avoid the congestion. And the third map shows the streets from Santiago to Flint that will be impacted should this drive thru be allowed to proceed. Again, we cannot stress enough that there were incorrect assumptions made in this decision process. First, the assumption that the proposed and existing sites are quote similar in terms of square footage and having a drive thru . As we have shown, that is misleading and not a complete or accurate picture. Second, in another quote from the memo, it states that S.E., the categorical exception was considered as an appropriate environmental clearance, given that the level of development that is being proposed is not significant. Of course, with these mistaken assumptions in place, no pollution impact or traffic impact studies were even considered much less requested. We do agree that the site needs rehabilitation, but to say, quote, anything would be better than what exists now ignores the very real problems in this project. However, as I hope we have been able to show you with this presentation, there is significant negative impact for the immediate neighborhood and the community in allowing a drive thru on this site. A contemporary building and pretty landscaping will not compensate for having a fast food, high volume drive thru in a residential neighborhood and a few feet from an impacted intersection. Please protect our safety and our neighborhood. Please do not allow a drive thru on this site. Thank you. My name is Jeff Overman. Anita's. What I need is wife and husband. Depending on what I'm doing. A couple of points that need to be made is one, No. Number one, no. Traffic study was done of seventh Street in the approval process of this project. The only the only traffic account that was done was on neighborhood streets, which by association will allow the developer to shuttle traffic without in impedance through the neighborhood by proving that not much traffic goes through our neighborhood currently. Number two, the and number two, the measures are impermissibly deferred. So there is no assurance to the neighborhood or to the users of PCH that the proposed traffic mitigations and methods, whatever they were. Or will ever be implemented. There's no commitment to that. I think that the Council needs to realize that based on 2008 to 2012 on trial car statistics eastbound on seventh Street, there are 2750 cars per hour that cross this intersection between Ultimo and Pacific Coast Highway. There were 28,500 cars that crossed this intersection every day, Monday through Friday. Those cars do come from districts one, two, three, four, five and six. To commute commercially and to commute to their businesses are accessing the 605405 CSU will be the Veterans Administration and Pacific Coast Highway going north and south and Bellflower Boulevard. What we will request, because basically what has been offered to us is a mitigated negative declaration, which is what the city is based on, that this will be mitigated potentially if a problem does arise. That to foresee that we would like to request a traffic study, a comprehensive traffic study of Seventh Street, not of the neighborhood, that any traffic and traffic problems or alternative routes that are used for a drive thru lane queuing. A study that shows how many cars based on the design that was submitted by Frontier Investments, can actually handle the quoted flow of 100 plus cars per hour that was quoted by the developer in two subsequent planning commission meetings. I myself personally do not believe that 100 cars per hour can pass through a ten queue lane in a drive thru without blocking the right hand lane of Seventh Street, which immediately impacts and delays. Long Beach Transit lines, 81, 91, 92, 93, 94 and 96 going eastbound. These are big deal. So what I'm requesting basically is a traffic, a comprehensive traffic study, a drive thru lane queuing study. And then based on the precedent from Santa Barbara in 2008, I would also like to request a pollution study done based on idle times of cars stuck in the queue. But with engines running because this is avoiding a residential neighborhood is not abutting a commercial environment. So I think I have the right and Santa Barbara has already granted that right to the developer to approve a development for a like for like drive thru before it passed or actually in this case disapproved the allowance for that development to proceed. I am offering, as the appellant in this issue, to pay for and organize these three studies. I will do them under the condition that the developer agrees with, with the experts that I hire to do to do this work. And the city also agrees to those people. I think if that's deferred to the developer, they will get a skewed study that allows them to put it in. We're talking about 90,000 cars per day that travel through this intersection, impeding commuters, commercial vehicles and the residents of Long Beach. So thank you very much. And that's what I'm requiring. And I ask only for an exemption and a denial to the drive thru. I would very much like to see this property developed and I believe that they have a very good design for development is just not acceptable as a drive through. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll have our next appellant, please. Hi. My name's Carolyn LaBelle. I live on Ultimo. I've lived there for decades, and I was here today because I'm very concerned about the traffic department. Just before just real quick and you one of the appellants, the official. I am. Because right now we're just of the appellants. Excuse me. I did I put a Freedom of Information request in at the very beginning of March for traffic studies for a section of Long Beach. I marked it all off and it was through official channels, and I got an official response back. Well, it was only about a week ago that I finally got the section that I had requested about traffic studies in East Long Beach. There was one page from Dave Grossman that showed where he'd gone up there, or one of its associates had gone up there for 3 hours and saw how many people bought donuts. That was the sum total of traffic reports that we got. This kind of information should be made available. If they haven't done anything in the last year and a half. Maybe we should put this project on hold. Maybe Traffic Department needs a lot more time to take a look at what's going on. So I'm here saying we need more information. And I also want to say to Gary DeLong, this is your legacy. Please help us. Thank you. Thank you. Next, apparently. Vice Mayor, Council members, thank you for the opportunity to be heard. My name is Mark Nevin and I live about 100 feet away from the proposed drive thru on Flint and also share the alley with the proposed project. Was born and raised in Long Beach and have owned. Lived in my home with my family for 13 years. It's the only home my daughter Jordan has ever known. I'm here representing 56 other appellants. We are not elitist activists, troublemakers or chronic complainers. We are just residents who are committed to protecting the safety and quality of life of ourselves and our families. We don't oppose the applicant's restaurant, just the discretionary scope for the drive thru. This drive thru will be nestled in sharing property lines with two single family homes. Even though the Long Beach Municipal Code prohibits a drive in restaurant from abutting a residential district. Imagine this. It's 4:45 a.m. in the morning. You're sleeping like a baby. Then a few minutes. The drive thru restaurant that's just a few feet from your window springs to life with late to work commuters yelling their orders into the Squawk Box in the drive thru exhaust fumes and noise from 100 plus idling cars per hour. The ones in the back of the line have their radios cranked up to kiss off from Rush Limbaugh or whatever they're listening to. Then you see the cars jockeying for position at the alley or to get out of the driveway on Flynt, trying to get the seventh, wondering when the first child on a bike or early morning stroller is going to get hit by one of these late to work in a hurry commuters. When you close off access to seventh Street so only Flint and the alley is the sole ingress and egress. It's going to happen. We conducted and recorded a video that demonstrates the path of travel that the applicant has designed and staff has affirmed. We will only accept this will only accommodate a maximum of 75 cars per hour. That's for all the that's for all the existing neighborhood and retail traffic. Plus the traffic that the drive thru will generate. Since access to seventh street is so limited, there is virtually no storage. The cars will take the path of least resistance, which is south on Flynt or south on the alley. Those are the only two choices. If they can't get out on Seventh Street and just 450 feet traveling south on one of those two paths. They're going to intersect. Long Beach, bike route number 16. Bike Route 16 is the primary path that children take to get to Lowell, Rogers and Wilson. It's a major safety issue involving our children. Then you realize you have to deal with this until 10 p.m.. That's 4:45 a.m. to 10 p.m.. Assuming a ploy, employees and customers won't get there more than 15 minutes before they open. Then you have to wait for the semi-truck to deliver the food. Duncan Brands uses tractor trailers to make all their deliveries. The drive thru element causes the proposed use to be defined as a drive in restaurant by Title nine of the Long Beach Municipal Code. In fact, the city has declared drive in restaurants such a nuisance that they have devoted an entire chapter in Title Nine for the nuisances they cause. According to the city, these Drive-In restaurant nuisances are revving your engine, doing burnouts or sudden stops, hawking your horn, blocking driveways, bringing alcohol on the premises, uninvited use of the premises and loitering. All of these are not including the other nuisances prohibited by the zoning regulations. The city already knows drive in restaurants are a nuisance. That's why zoning regulations prohibit prohibit drive in restaurants from abutting a residential district without the drive thru. However, it's not a drive in restaurant. The municipal code says that certain findings must be made before a cup can be approved. The approval is must be consistent with and carry out the general plan and all zoning regulations. The land use element of the general plan says that seventh street traffic volumes are heavy, particularly at peak hours, and owing to increasing volumes of traffic. Some management techniques will eventually be required. Thus, it will be important that auto dependent uses be restricted if not eventually eliminated. That was the late eighties. Eventually, as here, the proposed drive thru is an auto dependent use is exactly what the general plan says needs to be restricted or eliminated. The existing use is a nonconforming and grandfathered. The new development will eliminate this use just as the code intended. The proposed project is in land use District eight in the land use element states that these projects are numerous clusters of neighborhoods serving. Centers and are intended by the plan for every community with within about one half mile of each residence if feasible. The applicant testified and the staff report states that the proposed use will primarily serve commuters traveling eastbound on Seventh Street. This is commuter serving, not serving as the general plan states it should be. The code also requires that the drive thru will not be detrimental to the surrounding community, including public health, safety or general welfare, environmental quality and quality of life. I've already touched on that. The code also says that a drive in or fast food restaurant is a prohibited use when abutting a residential district. This is a drive in or fast food restaurant, yet it is being classified as a ready to eat restaurant so it can be built with a drive thru. Sir, just, just one quick is for for housekeeping. I just want to make sure you're part of a separate appellant. Correct. Of representing 56 other applications. This one additional and the third presentation. There should be one more appellate presentation after this one is that I try to make sure that that's the way it's organized. So please continue. It means every single element of a fast food restaurant, which means supplies food and beverages, primarily in disposable containers. Yes, it does. High automobile accessibility. It has a drive thru self-service. There is no table table service. So yes, it does. And short stays by customers has a drive thru. So short stays. It's difficult to say the following without sounding disrespectful. And I want the council to know that we think the development staff do an outstanding job, especially with their workload. This is the only administrator at the time. I believe it was. The previous zoning administrator said it cannot be a fast food restaurant because it doesn't have a cooktop. In other words, because they cook their chicken and sausage sandwiches in an oven instead of a grill, that means it's not a restaurant. And if it's not a restaurant, they can't classify it as a fast food restaurant. Otherwise it would be a fast food restaurant only if they had a grill. This was really missing the spirit and intent of the code. He has classified it as a restaurant ready to eat, and it doesn't meet any of those requirements which are cells food in a form that is ready to eat at the time of sale. The food is made to order, per Duncan Brand's website, primarily designed for takeout. They have a 600 square foot dining room, plus another 250 square foot of outdoor dining area. Full service kitchens are not allowed. It has a 1200 square foot kitchen with sinks, ovens, prep tables, walk in cooler and freezer. It doesn't have a range, though. On site service area is limited to 150 square feet of dining and in front of a counter area. This has a 600 square foot dining room that far exceeds the limitation of a restaurant of 150 50 square feet. The applicant testified at the Planning Commission hearing that the location will be just like a Starbucks because they are so successful. In fact, his exact words were they were emulating Starbucks. All of the Starbucks in Long Beach, except one in the Lowe Center on Bellflower does not have a drive thru. So if the proposed use is emulating a Starbucks then it should be fine without a drive thru and be successful. I was taking my daughter to school recently and she told me something that surprised me. We were on a bike Route 16 and Alamitos Heights, and she said it looked like a movie. I asked her what she meant. She says, Look at the trees and leaves the people jogging, walking their dogs, the moms with the strollers. It's like a scene out of a movie. I didn't really notice it until she said something, and she was right. That's beautiful. I don't think anyone wants that ruined by cut through traffic caused by a high capacity drive thru just 450 feet away from that bike route 16. During your during the Council discussion, I urged the Council to ask the City Attorney if the proposed use has a dining area bigger than 150 square feet. Can it still be classified as a ready to eat? If not, what are the classification? Would it best fit to doesn't meet? Does the use meet every criteria of a drive in restaurant? Three. Do the zoning regulations say that a drive in restaurant is a fast food restaurant? Four. Can the zoning regulations supersede any other title of the code if that other title imposes stricter regulations? That concludes my comments. Thank you. Thank you. There was exactly 10 minutes, so perfect. An hour. And our next and final appellant. Okay. I think I have a question. If there are in the last group of there are two of us who want to speak, but we each contain it so that the total is just 10 minutes. Absolutely. That yes. Satisfactory. But you have a total of 10 minutes, however you want to divide that up. Oh, okay. Yeah. Thank you. My name is Loretta Holly, and I'm here to express my concerns. I have lived on Ultimo since 1985. Right down the alley. Currently, there's room for the traffic to flow in and out of this site between the buildings with several means of entrance and exit. By demolishing the existing structures and creating one building and removing three entrances and exits other than the one off of seventh and one off of Flint, a residential street, the traffic flow will surely change. It is a certainty that some traffic will find a shortcut through the through the narrow alley or Flint. No, there's been no attempt to prohibit cars from exiting through the alley. City streets allow buffers and structural separations such as sidewalks, curbs and trees between vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Houses and garages are set back from the street. A person leaving their house or garage can be seen by an approaching driver well before getting to the street. That person can also see the approaching vehicle during this time, so he and a driver can make eye contact and see who will yield in an alley. The blind spots are everywhere garages, fences, roadways. Anyone who comes out from such a location into the alley roadway and offers absolutely no warning to an approaching driver and that driver very likely will not have time to stop if no one will exit through the neighborhood as is claimed. Why not ensure that cannot happen and reconfigured the site to reduce the traffic impact packed on the neighborhood as much as possible? Any mitigation after the fact will undeniably be limited as the basic footprint cannot be changed. We hope the city will consider the residents who have lived in the area for decades and that the city will view the aspects of the code and general plan that can be used to protect the residents, not as obstacles to overcome, but as tools to create a site plan that does not have such a negative impact on our neighborhood. We are not experts, and every recommendation we have proposed to alleviate the traffic impact has been rejected. I was born at Seaside and I've lived in Long Beach most of my life and have always liked the community feel of such a large city. I was in the playground at Prisk in 1985 when Signal Hill exploded and rained oil down on all of us. It was the day of our school carnival and I remember it very well. And none of the fathers were able to attend because they were all up on the hill shoveling dirt, doing whatever they could to help . Why? Because they needed to help their community and their children. We are doing the same thing, trying to protect our community by asking for your help in mitigating the traffic impact on our neighborhood before and not after the project is constructed. We believe the proposal needs to be examined further and the project conformed to all aspects of the code and what the traffic is required to enter and exit primarily from seven. A more substantial look at the traffic implications on the neighborhood needs to be done to ensure that there is minimal negative impact and that there are not unforeseen consequences that cannot be undone. The residents are the ones who have to live with the traffic generated by this project for the rest of our lives. It is our quality of life that will be affected and we are asking you to help us to help ensure that everything is done to protect the neighborhood before approval and not after. Thank you for your time with you. And this is part of the same account presentation. Please. Good evening, council members and Vice Mayor Garcia. I'm going to just cut to the chase. I've got some prepared remarks. But, you know, Mr. Rubio, can we play the video I'd like to play? Excuse me, sir, can you identify yourself? American Gary Morrison, 385 Flint Avenue, Alameda Seitz. Thank you, Mr. Mason. While we're waiting for the video to come up, I guess there's two questions that are burning, questions that I really have. Number one is if we could get a councilmember perhaps to have Mr. Mays explain to us the 150 square foot definition as it pertains to ready to eat restaurants. And then the second thing I'd I guess I'd like to talk about is I've seen the third division to the staff report and seen all of the redaction not redaction. I would say the changes which define this project as a ready to eat establishment. And I guess I'd like to know where in the Long Beach Municipal Code, the ready to eat establishment is clearly defined. And I think at the end of this video, it's going to prove to beyond a doubt that the traffic that is anticipated at the project is unable to get back to Seventh Street and will drive traffic into our neighborhood. So how do I start the video, sir? Here we go. Thank you. Sorry. We don't have music. We've laid out the exit of the drive through as and this is a representation of a car coming out of the drive thru with another car entering into the alley and there being not enough room for two cars to come and go. We bought some cars up to Flint Avenue and put up a camera on a telephone pole. Sorry, public works. And this is the data we came up with. This is looking north on Flint. These are cars backing up on Flint Avenue. We circled around and cut through the Vitamin Shoppe parking lot so we could simulate the traffic. Couple of pedestrians crossed the way. And there's a bus. One bus. Black Flint. I think we did irritate some donut customers in the making of this film. They wondered how come it took so long to get it back out onto Seventh Street. So we were able to get 75 cars out onto Flint maximum. We really don't believe there's enough square footage. So I guess, you know, just cutting to the chase on this topic. I had my first donut when I was 12 years old. And I hate to admit that that Dunkin Donuts was when I was 12 years old and that was 50 years ago. So I was kind of excited about this project when it first came on board. And quite frankly, the closer I got to the project, the more I became fearful of the drive through and the implications of the traffic and the safety of my neighborhood. And so that's really where one of my concerns lies very heavily. It's quality of life issue for me, and it's a quality of life issue for many of my my neighbors. I have nothing against Dunkin. I have nothing against the developer. I'm not happy about the drive thru. It's a safety concern. So what I would like, in addition to the couple of questions I asked to be asked, is to have a traffic study, number one. I had retained a traffic engineer, collected a traffic engineer opinion on the project. I have entered into evidence. I a summary of that letter would indicate that court using industry standards to do a trip analysis that a facility similar to the one proposed would average about 100 inbound cars during peak hours and could go as high as 225 vehicles. Now, you've heard the statistics on how many cars come up and down on Seventh Street. So so it's just a simple math problem to think that, you know, that's where they're going to draw the cars from. And then the second point of opinion from the traffic engineer was that there may not be enough storage space or ground space onsite to handle all the cars that are coming in and out of that parking lot during the peak hours. And the recommendation from our traffic engineer was that a traffic study be performed. Now what? What do I want? I think you can kind of guess what I want. I want a full independent traffic study before the project is approved. Second, I would like to see predetermined, planned, required, and specific traffic mitigation details approved before any concrete or any steel goes into the ground. And I respectfully request that you send this project back to the city or to the Planning Commission and have the plan reworked and work with the neighborhood and get the traffic study. Because really, I have a question. If any works are done at second PCH, do you do it without a traffic study? This is the second busiest intersection in our city and we don't have a traffic study. And we have to ask the question, can we reasonably say that the benefits of this project outweigh the benefits to the community without even having a traffic study? I guess if we can pause on the bluff. And expose the city to hundreds of thousand dollars, perhaps of additional expenses to make sure that the organic project gets done properly. Mid Project. Why can't we take the time now to handle this project and make sure it's done properly? It's just a simple, simple quality of life issue. Safety of children. Traffic. Cars. Car accidents. People getting rear ended. I can't even imagine. You know, we did that little cycle on the film. I wasn't all that excited about going up to Flint and turning right. One time, I never go up there and make that turn. I always go to San Diego. I always use the light. I ignored the impact of that seventh street traffic because it's a golden freeway. Do you have any questions for me? Now is not the time to ask questions for them. Okay. Thank you, sir. Okay. Okay. Well, that that concludes the the organized appellant comments that will. What we'll do now is we'll have an opportunity for the applicant to make comments if the applicant's interested in making comments. City members of city council. Thank you for having us here. You know, from the very outset, we've tried to approach this to be good neighbors. I mean, we've you know, we went to a couple of neighborhood meetings. We worked extensively. Who's me? Can you identify yourself for the record? Dan M Quest. We worked extensively for a period of six or eight months with the City Planning Department to work out all the kinks. Basically, you know, trying to put the best project forward that we could, you know, and through this process, you know, I guess I'm very sympathetic to, you know, neighbors concerns. I don't necessarily agree with all of them, obviously, but I guess it upsets me when they continually put words in my mouth and question my integrity. A couple of things have been said tonight about counts and statements I made in terms of the number of patrons that are going to be coming through there every hour. That's not true. You know, I've been I've called every single person back that's called our office. I visited with people individually. I talked to the council members, the planning department. We have nothing to hide. I mean, we're trying to do the best project that we can for the city. There's we collected there's close to 500 people in favor of the project through a petition over a two day period of time. We routinely have people calling our office and saying that they're very excited for Dunkin to come, that they can't wait. They're disappointed that we're facing the opposition. You know, at the end of the day, it's we could basically go in there and put Dunkin into the existing donut shop and release what was a closed down liquor store and open for business and, you know, a couple of months. But, you know, the buildings are not attractive. They don't look nice. We want to do a first class project for the city. If you go to the the first slide. Oh. This is a site. Have you talked about this pretty extensively? You can see the the daily grind and the vacant liquor store. You know, to my point right now, there's I've heard people continuously talk about the opposition to the drive thru. There's two drive thrus that are currently on the daily grind. What we've proposed is to take and make it. There are two non-compliant drive thrus and we're going to come in and make one drive thru that not only complies with city code but exceeds it by 30 foot a queuing space. This is a view heading west on seventh. You know, the notorious donut, which, you know, we had originally talked about donating it to the city. The community came out and said they wanted to keep it. So now we're working with the city planning department and a local signage company to restore the donut and keep it on site . This is a view of our building looking west. There's a disclaimer at the bottom. We didn't include the donut sign just because we haven't gotten direction from city staff as to how they want that to look and where they want it on the site. There's not we're not trying to hide anything, but we don't we don't know. We want to represent just what's factual. It's a view of the buildings heading east. You can see on the side of the vacant liquor store, there's been vandalism. You know, we've had to cover up spray paint. It shows you what our building's going to look like. If you go back, you'll see there's no landscaping in the front of the project. The sidewalks on our project, we've we've not only increases the width of the sidewalks, we've also put landscaping in the front of the building. It's a view from the back of the property. This is what actually faces the neighborhoods. You'll see they have their HBC units on the roof. The parking lot isn't even striped right now. That's the front of our building. You know, I've heard, you know, people talk about the problem with traffic off of seventh. On one hand, I hear people saying that, you know, they can't people can't get out on to seventh and that we should have more access points. If you talk to any traffic engineer. You know, they're trying to push traffic as far away from the intersection as possible. You'll see from this exhibit there's four ways that you can come on to seventh right now, none of which are compliant per city code. You know, you need the flow of traffic. You know, a picture is deceiving. The traffic moves, you know, very quickly. We have zero concerns about people being able to get out of our site, back on track and seventh. They continue on to their way. Okay. So we've heard about, you know, it's there now. This is the existing drive through. You can't even queue three cars without the last car going out into the street. And this is one of the drive thrus. There's two on site right now. This is our site plan. So as you can see, we're widening the access point off a seventh to approximately 30 feet. We're pushing it as far away from the intersection as we can. As Amy pointed out, we push the building as close to the street as we can. You know, I've heard somebody say that we located the menu board, so it's facing the residents. That's a lie there. The menu board is actually facing Seventh Street to keep, you know, any noise that it might generate away from the houses. I've also heard about cars and the noise those might generate. The cars are directly adjacent to Seventh Street for a continuous, you know, a busy street. That is the drive thru lane per city code. You need to have 150 feet to cue cars. We have 180 feet. So what we're trying to do and what we've worked extensively with city staff on is to self contain, you know, everything on our site. We're parked per city code. We've done extensive work with our architect. We fully anticipate anticipate that the customers coming out of the drive thru are going to go back on to seventh. Or if they do come out of Flint, they're going to go left and continue on to seventh. I don't know if you watched during the video that was presented. I did not see one car that came out of the daily grind that turned right. Every single car that came out made a left and went up and went right on the seventh. So, you know, there's this argument about the alley and our customers going down the alley. I'll pay down the alley, post it so cars can go through there. I mean, we don't anticipate nor we encourage. In fact, we'll monitor and make sure cars don't go down the alley. We've we've shown that we already have talked to Councilmember DeLong about putting a site sign up that says no outlet to discourage people from going down there. In addition on Flint, we've already said that we'll put put signage up that says no right turn. You know, we've talked about traffic studies. I've already spent $3,000 on a traffic study, you know, monitoring the circulation of traffic, you know, through the site now to have a baseline. So if something were to occur, we could work with the traffic department to change that down the road. We've already agreed to predetermined times when we would come in and monitor and take take other accounts. I've talked to Councilmember DeLong about making a significant contribution to do a traffic study for the entire area, because it seems like , you know, there's a lot of traffic on seventh. You know, we acknowledge that. But it's not it's not our fault, you know, and we want to be going back to the fact that we want to be a good neighbor. We'd like to evaluate the overall problem for the entire community and help to see how we can help resolve that. But this argument that traffic generated from our site is going to, you know, go back into the neighborhood. We just don't see that. You know, this is one of the slides. And, you know, going back, it's when, you know, when I say something and then people come back up here and basically put words in my mouth, it upsets me. You know, integrity is the most important thing to me. You know, we always honor our word and do what we say we're going to do. This is a slide that came up and said that picture more misleading than a thousand words. And it looks like Seventh Street is overflowing with cars. So. Well, it's funny. It's funny is this is the actual picture. And all the cars that were put in the seventh were Photoshopped in. And, you know, when this was. Here's the. Thing. Let's let's go ahead let's let's give the gentleman hey, let's go to give the gentleman his his time to give his presentation, please. Without comment, sir. You know, to conclude, you know, what we want to do is take down an existing building that's blighted sin decay, and it doesn't make city code. And we want to replace it with a brand new building that, you know, far exceeds city code. Our application is a like for like use. They're selling donuts and coffee there right now. That's what we want to sell, donuts and coffee. 70% of what we sell is coffee. So, you know, like I said, you know, right now with what's existing there, you know, we could, you know, literally reuse the existing building and open a Dunkin Donuts there. But that's not what we want to do. As I said earlier, we are replacing a non code compliant double drive thru with a compliant single drive thru as I showed in the exhibit. Right now you can't even stack three cars in the drive thru with a drive thru that we've shown. It's got 180 feet of stacking because we're reducing the number of curb cups along seventh. We think this is going to actually improve the flow of traffic along seventh because it's pushing cars back farther away from the intersection. As I said earlier, we've agreed to work in partnership with the city to monitor and if necessary, resolve any changes in future traffic conditions that may arise. And we've agreed to a $10,000 contribution towards comprehensive a comprehensive traffic study for the entire area, not just for our our site. So I guess a couple of points that I wanted to address that were brought up in the earlier presentation with regards to delivery. We only take delivery two days a week and we will you know, we would expect and we will monitor that all deliveries are handled in a manner that doesn't cause any any heartache on the neighborhood. You know, I talked about the alley earlier. In no way, shape or form do we expect or we will do everything in our power to make sure that cars are not going down the alley. The drive thru location, as I pointed out earlier, we've been very thoughtful and how we've done that, trying to orient the speaker box away from the residences. So in closing, I want to thank the city staff again. They spent a lot of time and helped to come up with what we feel is a great project. And there's a lot of people that disagree with the people that are here and are excited to see us come to Long Beach. So thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you. Now we're going to go ahead. And as part of the hearing, there's an opportunity for the appellant to make a rebuttal to the presentation. And so if the appellants would like to do that, please come forward and we should limit this in the time of this. So please try to be brief and then the applicant will also have the same opportunity if they would like. So please. The appellant and Mr. Clark, if you can limit each of these to 3 minutes. Please. The appellant. Talked about putting words in his mouth. I don't think so. He he originally came to us and said he expected 300 cars between a period of six and 9 p.m. starting and hoping to grow after that. That's 100 cars per hour. And ironically, that's exactly what the Institute of Transportation Engineers estimates for that location in that business. He said the existing drive through is non-conforming. That's true. And this is exactly the process to get rid of that non-conforming drive thru by by granting a copy for a new drive thru. It entitles that property forever with that drive thru. If his business fails, that drive thru is there. It carries with title that is really not good for us. The general plan says. That these types of uses should be eliminated from Seventh Street, not continued. This is the time to do it. This is the chance to get rid of the nonconforming drive thru. If he wants to reuse the building for a Dunkin Donuts, I am pretty sure Duncan Brands would not allow that, but I don't know. Maybe so. The existing use is not the kind of high capacity drive thru that he has. It's a you pull up to the window old fashioned style. You order through the window, your coffee, they make it, then they give it to you. It's quite a long process. 25 cars per hour comes out of their peak on the video. He says he didn't see any cars making a right out of out of the donut shop. That's because those cars were ours. We were recirculating our own cars. That's why he didn't see any of those cars turning. Right. We kept we've been talking about paying for a traffic study, but the traffic study should be done first. Before the development, not after. He also said he would put signage so nobody could turn down the alley. Well, what he's saying is make make the alley one way. My garage happens to face Seventh Street, so that means I wouldn't even be able to get to my own garage because I need to come through that direction to get into my garage. You noticed he didn't deny that they use semi-tractor trailers for delivery. That's bad. This is this is a residential neighborhood. There should not be semi-tractor trailers driving through a residential neighborhood delivering sandwiches and donuts. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Next to Palin, please. Once again, this is Jeff Overman. 655 Ultimo. 3 minutes. Mr. Kirk. She. Oh, I'm sorry. First of all, Dan's first statement, which was I'm work with neighborhood he has a very a very gratuitous kind of attitude. Frontier Group led by Dan Alquist and Robert Jonas. These are Orange County people. Newport Beach are planning 18 units in Orange County in the South Bay region in Los Angeles County. This is a direct quote, source restaurant news 1113. This is a hinge, hinge, hinge, hinge inch issue. If he does not get this first unit in, he cannot build the other 70. It's very, very important to him. I live two blocks away from this. He has never spoken to me. He's never engaged me. He's never done anything like that. Second thing, the pictures that you saw, the ones that he took from me, from my presentation, which I prepared and I am I am a Photoshop artist. That's true. That is more representational than the pictures he showed with no automobiles on Flint, on Seventh Street, in any of his renderings. That is not a possible view for an intersection that handles 90,000 cars per day. No, he can represented anyone he wants, but that is not a possible view. I read I have circulated a book yesterday to each of you. It has sources in it. I have a copy of the Dunkin Donuts non-disclosure document, which is a 500 page document. Basically, Duncan, his commitment to this operation, this initial operation, which at the hinge pins is the drive thru so that he can shovel more people in which he has not done to drive through a queuing study which says that he is under an 80 feet, which he touts as being a lot of footage is under nine cars. It's 180 feet. It's ten cars. If there are midsize cars, people drive trucks, people drive SUV's. These cars are over 18 feet. His monthly not based on all costs, including employee costs, utility costs, insurance costs will be $102,756.16 per month. 18 employees will work at this operation during the 20 hours that it is open. He has to open the store. He has to stock the story. He has to prepare the store. He opens the store. He's in an operation. He has to close the store. He has to clean the store. This is not the operation that he's pretending it to be. His. His views of his driveway are not accurate. They will not allow cars in and out. This is documented in the booklet that you all received. As you can see, when driving patterns in a realistic fashion are represented at scale. Car there is mass confusion because of the two entrances, the two lane drive through which cuts. And he said, I'll stop in 1/2 at a residence at the property line where his property ends. You have to turn the alley into a single lane, which is going to are stopping access of medical fire in. The center of the path of all this. So that's the cue. I just wanted you to really. Thank you very much, sir. He talks from the way he saw. I have to cut you off, sir. Thank you. Okay. Next. Appellant, please. There's a rebuttal. My name is Catherine Grace. I live at. 435. Flynn Avenue. I just want to bring it all back to what's really important, which is our neighborhood and our children. There are 14 kids on the on that first block of Flint between seventh and sixth. When you have a drive through and you have cars coming and turning right on to Flint because they can't get on to Seventh Street, they're putting our children in danger. We have three schools within a very close proximity. We have Lowell, Rogers and Wilson. There are kids in our neighborhood every morning going to school at the same peak hours that we're going to have the cars coming through that drive through. Mr. Roseman and the traffic engineer said there would be about 30% of the cars would not want to turn left and go back on to Flint or into seventh. Excuse me. So they will be turning right on Flint and going right down into our neighborhood. Mr. ALQUIST This is not personal. This has nothing to do with you as a person. This has to do with the quality of life and the safety of our children and funneling that many cars that are just human nature. Some of us don't like to sit and wait at Seventh and Flint. I am one of them. I always go to to Havana and turn onto Seventh Street. Human nature. Some of us, like my husband, always want to be moving. So they are going to cut through the neighborhood. Just even if it's not faster, it makes them feel like they're getting somewhere. So the concern is safety. All of the kids in that neighborhood who are going to the schools in the. Fact that. You've got your rush hour, people trying to get to work with a sandwich in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, and they're cutting through the neighborhood when our children are on their way to. School. That is my concern. I would love to have donuts. I'm very much pro donut. I'm just. Please, no drive thru. Thank you. Thank you. And our last rebuttal. Mr. Clark, 3 minutes. I'm back. So with regard to returning phone calls, I would like to say, can you identify yourself? Gary Morrison, 385 Flynn Avenue, L Avenue, Alamitos Heights. I was at the first meeting that they in Alameda Heights and to best of my knowledge, the only meeting where Frontier Development rolled out their Dunkin Donuts project. I was there, I asked for some data, was requested to give contact information, would receive a phone call the next day. I waited an appropriate amount of time into the next day and placed a phone call and had a conversation with Mr. Armacost. My best memory of that conversation goes specifically to 100 cars per hour or more. That's it in a nutshell. That conversation. That's how it went. I'd like to go switch gears to the conversation about perhaps they could come in and kind of refurbish the two buildings and open up right away. Well, I. I would kind of like to sort of accept that notion, but maybe we can just go ahead and build a freestanding Dunkin Donut as a drive in restaurant and eliminate the drive thru. And so basically we can upgrade the two substandard buildings and Mr. Angus can build what I agree is a very attractive building and put it in place. You know, when you come and speak in front of you and we kind of work together, I got to tell you, it's like herding cats because we're all kind of all over the place because we need to work and take care of our families. We need to figure out what's what. One of the hardest things about working this process is getting data and getting data in a timely manner. For instance, I've been looking to get data on trucks and deliveries for a couple of weeks now. I was at Planning Department early this morning, asked a similar question and was redirected to Mr. Holmquist. I asked for information regarding menu so he could get a sense of operation. Is this a standard Dunkin Donuts project or isn't it? I once again was directed to Mr. Holmquist, so I guess I'm asking for some consideration on our part because we don't get all the data. We just don't. And I don't know why. And I would like to know why. If I go to city staff and ask about the operations, how come they don't have that data? How come I have to come back and get it? How come they don't know what the menu is? How come they don't know what trucks are coming and going? So I think that should go back to Planning Commission and I think more data needs to be collected and shared openly. I would like to have a successful project and I'd like Mr. Holmquist to have that project there. I do not want the drive thru. Thank you so much. Thank you. And now if the if the applicant would like a rebuttal at all, you have the legal right to do that. Are interested in a rebuttal to the comments. You don't. You don't have to take it. It's up to you. That's okay. Okay. And then now what we'll do is if there's any additional public comment on the item. And I think, Mr. Cherney, because of the length of the hearing, we can limit these 2 to 2 minutes. Is that appropriate? It's within your discretion, yes. Okay. Mr. Clark, please. Vice Mayor. Members of council staff. My name is John Humphrey, and I live at 620 Ultimo Avenue. I am not opposed to the applicants project per se. Both the general plan and the zoning ordinance already allow for such a use on the site. And we as neighbors are interested in seeing that site improved. I am, however, adamantly opposed to the inclusion of the drive thru lane being proposed. Some might argue that since the original grain already located on the site is a drive thru business, there should be no problems created by replacing it with the proposed business. However, the proposed fast food facility is projected to increase by at least 400% approximately 25 cars per hour currently exiting the site, as documented by the receipts from the old grind or the original ground. The traffic is normally backed up during peak rush hours from the light at PCH and seventh down to at least Los Altos and sometimes beyond. I have seen vehicles take at least two light changes to get through the intersection of PCH. The data listed by the previous commentator is correct. Given the extremely heavy volume of traffic on the seventh and the regular congestion there, cars visiting the original ground and attempting to return to seventh Street during peak hours most usually rely on what I would call a Good Samaritan, and they are surprisingly common to allow them to exit from the side onto Seventh Street. This takes a few extra seconds for traffic in that lane. Then this is something that most people seem to find acceptable. And it's not. Problematic because it involves a single car attempting to enter the site on the seventh. While the current average of just 25 cars per hour presents minimal delays. Thank you, sir. I think if we have. Sorry. No problem. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. My name is Bill Thomas. I am a resident of Alameda. States Live on 620 Winslow. That's the next street east of Flint. Actually, walking distance from the front of my house is about a little over 200 yards from the property. I've been active in this community for the last 11 years. I'm disappointed that we have so many people for and against that. Our our neighborhood is normally a very quiet, family oriented neighborhood. And this is disappointing to me personally to have this. But I was one of the four gentlemen that the folks came and talked to. I thought it was a great idea where you can get rid of the are transients that spend the night there. I was in favor at the Planning Commission. All this information on the internet got me confused. So I went over and did my own little survey of 3 hours on from 630 to 931 Friday morning. And I noticed over 40 cars per hour coming through between the eight and nine, which surprised me because I never knew there was that good a business over there. On Winslow, we have about five times more traffic than you have on Flint. I believe. We have an excellent engineering department, driving engineering department here. I don't think this is the first coffee shop you've set up, and I think we ought to listen to the traffic engineer and take Hayden's from them as to what is best for the neighborhood. And I have some numbers I could share, but it's better to have the traffic engineer who is professional to make the proper study and make the determination. There's two Starbucks within a few blocks on one on PCH and one on seventh. This is not the only coffee shop in the neighborhood, folks. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Yasmeen Rabbani and I live on Flint Avenue. I am one of those people that drive up Flint and make a right on Seventh Street and rely on the kindness of people to let me out. And yes, usually as a kind person, but they're usually is not more than me. One car trying to get out. I want a good business there. I want a strong, viable business. I have no opposition to that whatsoever. What I do want to make sure is that any mitigations are known ahead of time. When I ask people, well, why not just have the traffic go back out on the seventh, I they tell me, well, that's because it'll cause too much traffic. So if it's going to cause too much traffic out on seventh, how is it going to be less traffic maybe going on to Flint or down the alley? Where else is it going to go? So if we have a and when I ask, well, what would happen if there is no plan for what would happen a year from now when they go back to look and say, well, yeah, there is a little too much traffic, there are too many traffic issues. I'd like to see a study done. I'd like to see a strong business in there. I'd like to see plans in place that say if there is an issue, we know how we're going to address it and not go back in retrospect and say, Well, that didn't work out so well. I think we should have thought that one through a little bit. And I do think that we shouldn't be confusing ourselves with the fact that this is anything other than about traffic and safety and not about a good and strong viable business going in there. Thank you very much. Your next speaker. Larry Goodyear Clark, as the address. About six weeks ago or eight weeks ago, I was here commending the staff on really the outstanding job they did on a project on Livingston from the Termino down to the entrance to Belmont Shore. It was clearly the best project I've seen in the city in 30 years. This is the polar opposite. This is the polar opposite of this. These will be the drive thru aspect and it's an impact on the alley. And this is again in my in my view. Concrete evidence of the dangers of the second hand smoke coming from marijuana. This is the second penis head plan we've come seen brought before this chamber in the last month. The first, of course, was will be addressed little later today. Again, the idea of buying a spending 400, $500,000 for a parking for an open de facto public latrine down in Belmont, Belmont Shore. The idea of of increasing the traffic was, as the business model indicates to any honest person, is going to happen. And running that traffic through that neighborhood is just it is just ahead up the rear idea period. And I would challenge that the staff needs to go back and do the job that it needs to get done. And I understand that has been the budget has been cut and you haven't been able to put your best foot forward. And this certainly, certainly is an example of that. The only other suggestion I would make is to examine the possibility of maybe giving to the residents there. Put a gate up at the toll gate, a gate at the alley, and have the residents have a key to that car key, just like they go in and out of gated community. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Michael Hale. I live on Havana Avenue. In the Triangle, which is north of the seventh. Street. I'm here to express my concerns about the project, especially the conditional use permit for the drive thru. Yes, the existing drive thru is deficient, but we shouldn't. As the appellants pointed out with excellent knowledge of both the codes. And the numbers. Put a put a drive thru opportunity there for future businesses. If especially if Dunkin Donuts does fail. I've been a city employee for 30 years, a project manager. Who's used to putting. Projects round circle projects into the square holes of municipal, state and federal regulations. I find it difficult to understand how we are able to call this fast food restaurant a ready to eat restaurant just to avoid the requirement of not having. A drive thru adjacent to. Properties. I live again north of seventh. The streets. Along north of seventh are notorious for people who need. To get to work, want to. Get to work, and will speed through the residential streets to do so. They will make a right where legal and go from seven to PCH avoiding this intersection. And I want to have that experience stop in my neighborhood and not affect the neighbors south of seventh. Like to address Diane, if you can be a developer, get some thick skin. No one called you a liar. You called us liars and your people in the back. Sir, if you can address that, the chair. That'd be great. When the people and his team. Make comments about the. Kids who are participating in our democratic process, saying, Let's confiscate their signs, where in the hell? So you can use people and address the chair? Where in the hell do his people feel that they have the entitlement to confiscate someone else's right to speech? And so let's make sure to make sure that during hearings that you're that we're addressing the chair of the body here. Thank you. Certainly. My name is Mary Kate and I live on Fourth and Winslow. And I don't want to beat a dead horse. This is starting to sound like a Charlie Brown episode in the classroom. I want want. What about the traffic issue? But I'm going to talk a little bit about human nature. I work up in the city of Los Angeles. I work 50 plus hours a day. I use a smartphone that has a Sig Alert app. I live in the city of Long Beach. I moved here in 2004 with my partner. When we first drove through that community of Alamitos Heights in 2004, it was too residential for us. It was quiet. And we were looking for a little different atmosphere. We bought a home in Belmont Heights on a thoroughfare to the beach, and we've lived there for ten years. After the noise of cars going down our street for ten years and lack of sleep. We began to. Look for another house. And we looked in the area of Alamitos Heights. And the reason why we did. Is because of the quiet nature of that particular. Residential area. One of the other first things I noticed when I moved to the city of Long Beach in 2004 is on this on Seventh Street. There are no turn signs posted on every residential street, no left turn. And I would imagine that those signs were placed on every Russell Dental Street there for a purpose. And that was because people. Were creating. A thoroughfare through the area of residential of Alamitos Heights to get someplace out else. Before I leave, I want to talk a little bit about human nature. I mentioned that I work up in the city of Los Angeles. I spend a great deal of time driving myself. I am looking for every quick thoroughfare to get to my destination as I possibly, possibly can. And once I find that thoroughfare, it becomes the thoroughfare that I use repeatedly. So once the people that are going in and out of a drive through a Dunkin Donuts find a thoroughfare that's easier and quicker to get to their destination. They will continue to use that every day. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. The honorable vice mayor and the city council. My name is Running Cohen. I live at 644 Flint Avenue. I've lived there most of my life. It's about 150, maybe 200 feet from the property location. And there's two issues I wanted to address. One is there seems to be some contention between the appellants and the applicant as to the number of cars he would like to have at the property or he intends to have at the property. My solution would simply be that if the applicant really. Doesn't expect to have 100 cars at the. Location and doesn't need 100 cars, how about we limit him to 100 cars an hour? How about we simply limit this property, put it as part of the CHP that he can't have more than 50. Cars an hour. And that would just be part of the copy. If that number is exceeded, he would report that back to the city and we wouldn't have to worry about the excess number of cars. He doesn't seem to think it's necessary and we certainly don't want it. The other issue I'd like to raise is, is it a legal issue? I went to law school. I know that several of you went to law school. And I would ask that you take a look at the code, the code that we think this property, clearly this development clearly violates. There is a provision in the municipal code that states that a fast food restaurant cannot abut a residential neighborhood. Somehow the city and the applicant came to the conclusion that this is not a fast food restaurant. Several of the people have spoken before me are a little puzzled had how we came to that, how the city came to that conclusion. I certainly don't understand it, but it was explained to me that the reason it's not a fast food restaurant is because it's not a restaurant at all. And the reason it's not a restaurant is because it's not it doesn't have a full kitchen. And in order to have a full kitchen, it needs to have a range, an oven, an oven vent and a double sink. And if you don't have all of those things and you read the code, it does seem to sort of suggest. That it's not a kitchen and therefore not a restaurant and therefore not a fast food restaurant. But that's really an absurd. Interpretation of the. Code. Thank you, sir. We have to conclude. I just want to say, can you really build a a McDonald's there. Without a double sink? And it's not a. Fast food restaurant. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Paula Cohen. I live on Flint Avenue in the block where the proposed site is. I've lived there for over 20 years. I'm raising five children there. I sometimes cycle to work. Myself and my five children. Regularly cycle to school. I simply want to remind you that I'm here not to represent my own children, but the many children who live in the neighborhood who will be cycling and walking to school while all of these cars are driving through our neighborhood. I also want to briefly reference. Something that the lady a couple speakers ahead of me mentioned about. The way the way people work, the way. People function. I recently was reassigned temporarily to the Santa monica courthouse. I had no idea. How to get there quickly in order to arrive there 830. In the morning. So I used ways. I don't know if any. Of you have ever used Waze. But it was brilliant. Help me to get to work in a reasonable time, and it took me through all. Kinds of neighborhoods I would never have discovered. Otherwise. I am sure that Waze will quickly figure out the way to get. Out of this donut store, and that is going to be to go down Flint Avenue and all the other residential streets in our neighborhood. And it's going to be. Directing traffic, a lot of traffic through a quiet. Residential neighborhood. And I ask you. Please, to reconsider. Don't let that happen in our neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Sally Meyerhoff and I live at 515 Ultimo Avenue. And I was going to bore you with my letter. But I won't do that now because it's everything that everybody else has said. And you all received it in your email. So if you get a chance, I want to get bored and go take a nap, read my letter. But after listening to everybody speak, there's two points that I want to make. One. I moved here two years ago and we heavily renovated a house, and part of the requirements that the city made us do was to cut off our back fence at 45 degrees, coming out of my driveway into the alley in order for it to be a safe way for me to exit. And people can so I can make a turn into the alley and I can go down to either fourth or sixth Street to get out of my neighborhood. And that was purely a safety issue. And I understand that. And that to me, after I was hearing a re talk about the owl, because I'm really kind of removed. From. Flint Street. But we I have to travel very slowly down my alley. I use my alley probably 80% of the time to go in and out of my driveway. So I think there is a real concern there with the Flint alley there in the traffic and then putting an added burden of cars coming off of Dunkin Donuts and going down there to exit. The second thing is I do have a degree in culinary arts and I have worked in a restaurant. I'm also an ex-employee of Dunkin Donuts when I was 17 years old. So I know how it works and there is no way that they're going to be able to get that number of cars in an hour effectively with the menu. You know, if you take a hundred cars, it takes 60 minutes, takes 36 seconds to get a car through there. We can serve a cup of coffee there. But then you have to factor in the time it's going to take to put together, you know, an Egg McMuffin of some sort. They're going to have that all pre-filled. I'll be ready to go, but it still takes time. You put the egg in the microwave, it's going to take you 30 seconds to cook it. You got to put it together. So the average time is going to be probably closer to 2 to 3 minutes per car. And if you look at a lot of data with all the other fast foods, you know, McDonald's has got it down on Bellflower. They've got a three point system is so you pay, you bought, you bought, you pay, you order, you pay and you pick up. So I would like you to consider not approving this yuppie for the drive thru. I want Dunkin Donuts. I love them. Thank you. And our our final speaker, please. Hi. Good evening. My name's Sharon Hagan and I live at 600 Flint Avenue. I have something that I'm concerned about that I have not heard addressed yet, and that is if there's going to be an ATM or any money getting back service at this non fast food restaurant. Because when the Vitamin Shoppe is going in, we successfully, because of the increased traffic on our street battled and won for them not to be given an ATM for that reason for traffic for our safety. So since this is going to have a lot more because fortunately more people buy donuts than vitamins, a lot more traffic, I'm just concerned that if there's an ATM or whatever a 100 cars might be, 125 cars might take longer. All of that is my only point. Good evening. Thank you. Okay. We're going to go ahead and close the hearing portion and have council deliberation and questions. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that and take this back behind the rail. I'm gonna turn this over first to Mr. DeLong. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Appreciate that. And thank you all who came? Not to testify regarding this project. You know, it's an illuminating experience for all of us. I guess we'll staff that one woman, one woman. I can't answer her question. That is, there is no fast way to get to Santa monica at 830 in the morning. But I also have a few questions for staff as well. One of the the speakers made the comment that the drive thru is designed to channel cars down the alley, I guess down the alley, heading south behind residential homes. So perhaps, Ms.. Potok, whoever the appropriate person is to to respond to that. But I'd like to know if that's your belief that you're approving the design. And then also, can you talk a little bit about the alley and the fact that we're removing curb cuts? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing, the widening of the alley that we saw? Well, yeah, to the first question then I'll continue. Sorry about that. That's part of the design. Mr. Rosemond and I were doing rock, paper, scissors here. And, you. Know, I won. So I'm going to talk about the site plan. As you can see, we did. If you turn to your exhibit in your staff report, we did orient the building so that the drive thru does orient along seventh street. There is an existing alley that abuts the site to the west. There are in the existing condition for curb cuts, including the alley. There is an alley curb cut, a nice utility telephone pole, a curb cut for the liquor store and then to curb cuts for the existing coffee shop. So we are as as part of the requirements are requiring that there be a five foot alley dedication and that is in your conditions of approval. And we are also requiring that an entirely new widened curb cut be constructed so that there is entrance and exiting off of Seventh Street. And that alley does narrow down after after the Dunkin Donuts property, and then it would revert to the traditional alley that it is now. Also, as a condition we are requiring that that the entire length of the alley that adjoins the site. So from seventh Street to the to the rear of the property, be completely paved and completely repaved and improved. Does that answer your question on that? Almost so. Was the project designed to channel cars down the alley heading southbound behind the residences? Garages? No, it is not. I have been down that alley as well. And do you agree? It's a very tight alley? We do not we do not design projects to feed into the alleys. We do design projects for ease onto the streets. So the design of this had nothing to do with with channeling cars down the alley. Thank you. And on the video where they had the car coming in off Seventh Street and somebody trying to exit, and it was like, you know, a head on the fact that you're widening the curb cut. Would that make that situation better then there's more space to get in and out on Seventh Street? Yes, Councilman, actually, by concentrating the movements at the alley and at Flint, rather than having four options, plus Flint, which would be five total to enter the roadway, there's that creates a lot of conflicts. So by widening the alley, if you think about it, every car that comes in also has to leave, right? So if there's a car that's coming in a wider alley that provides an opportunity for somebody at the alley to exit, so that car comes in, one car exits. It makes it very easy. That's a lot, lot easier to exit at the alley position than it would be at Flint, where somebody has to be a good Samaritan to allow you to get out of that out into the traffic stream. So that's part of the reason of the design. By concentrating and widening the alley, it provides a much better access point for the for the property as well as an exit point on to Seventh Street. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Roseman. And while we're talking about traffic, one of the other comments was about semi-trucks being allowed to drive through the residential neighborhoods. Help me understand that from a traffic engineer perspective, how would you expect delivery trucks to to access and leave that site? What's what's the route? Well, I'm not sure where they're where they'll be coming from. But if you look at a larger at a larger vehicle that's going to access the site, if you're a driver, probably the best way to access the site would be to go west. I'm sorry, eastbound on Seventh Street, turn onto Flint and then into the driveway of the Dunkin Donuts. Do your delivery of your your stuff there on site and then exit via the alley and make a make a right turn on to Seventh Street. That would be the most logical way for for a delivery vehicle to to. To access the site. Okay. Because I do agree with people. I mean, you know, humans are going to look for the easiest ability to get onto an off of of their property. So I saw your perspective the. What else I have here. One of the residents had asked if we could make Flint Avenue a cul de sac. So essentially you just you physically could not turn right to get out, even though we saw the cars turn left, but we'd have some hardscape that prevented that. So from a traffic engineer's perspective, is that a good idea, bad idea? Can we do it? Where does that fit? Generally, that wouldn't be an option. In today's urban environment, we don't like to make dead ends. If there is a dead end in a roadway network, you want to create a cul de sac large enough for a vehicle to turn around in. And since Flint is is a relatively narrow street, residential street, in order to create a cul de sac to turn around, you would have to acquire property, most likely from both sides of the street, the Vitamin Shoppe site, as well as as a Dunkin Donuts site, and probably also two of the residential properties to create a a turnaround large enough to to allow that to occur. Yeah. I mean, it has to be south of the development, right? Because you want to let people get out of the development to be able to turn left on Flint and turn seven. So. So you wouldn't support a cul de sac. It would take a huge amount of real estate to to be compliant with the fire codes as well as our on street urban street design standards. Okay. I don't think going to take anything away from the residents. How about as far as maybe making Flint Avenue a one way street, the you know, that limitation. That that's a possibility. It does impact everybody that lives there on Flint in that they could only access their properties, go in the same direction as everybody else. There wouldn't be any residential provision. Yeah. Provision for that. When we put something one way, everything is one way. But normally when we do do a one way in order to provide good circulation, we, we try to team that up with a one way go in the opposite direction on another street. And in this environment, I just don't really think that that makes a lot of sense to provide, you know, turn two streets into one way in both impacting the neighborhood. For a project like this, you can essentially create a one way out of the Dunkin Donuts by restricting right turns into the neighborhood. And legally, that would be almost exactly the same as creating a one way on the street itself. Is is that something that if the council directs you to do a traffic study in the neighborhood that you could analyze to see what the pros and cons would be, and then also include some community outreach to ensure that those residents on the two streets it would be impact would be supportive of this change. Yes. Normally when we do one ways or our process is to contact everyone that's on that block and have and have the residents express their opinion. And we generally don't take anything to counsel converting the street to one way unless we have two thirds support. So if there was a traffic study that was done for the entire neighborhood and and the vast majority of the residents supported a one way street, then that would come back to council here for a final determination. And you're I don't know if you have an opinion, but in your opinion, how long would the business need to be in operation in order to understand what the potential traffic impacts are? Because like we did today, we make it back and say, no, there's no purpose to do it. But maybe, I don't know, six months, nine months, a year from now, you might say, well, there is some benefit. Yeah, we had that debate it at Planning Commission. Is it six months? Is it one year? I tend to believe it's about six months, somewhere between six months and one year. First off, when it opens up, people might not be aware it's there. They're trying to find their way to get there. They're building their customer base. So at about six months is when I think it's staples out. All right. We'll probably chat about that a little more for the nights over. There was also a request from a resident about having some kind of traffic bollards to block traffic into the alley between Ultimo and Flint. Do you have an opinion on that? Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that either. That's creating the same dead end condition that we talked about with Flint. Okay. Let me see what else I have here. Just a moment. Back to the planning staff, if I may. It seems like there are quite a number of questions regarding restaurant versus ready to eat. Can you try and clarify that issue for us and understand why the staff say this is a ready to eat as opposed to a restaurant? Certainly we do have a number of definitions to choose from within the code. One is the definition of a restaurant. One is the definition of ready to eat food restaurant, and the other one is fast food restaurant and then drive in restaurant, which refers you back to fast food. Based on the description and the floor plan that was given to us, the zoning administrator determined that this is a ready to eat restaurant for the purposes of the definitions that we have in the code. It is not a sit down restaurant and it does not qualify as a fast food restaurant. And therefore we determined that it was a ready to eat restaurant. Okay. Thank you. Is it? Is it possible to restrict hours of delivery and days of delivery? Like, for example, I read somewhere or perhaps I heard tonight that the applicant says deliveries are two days a week and we hold them to that two days a week. We currently do not have any conditions of approval related to deliveries, but that is absolutely in the discretion of the City Council to do so. We have worked with businesses in the past and business districts to try to limit deliveries within certain time frames. It is slightly hard to enforce when you get multiple businesses involved because then they they kind of point to each other and say, that's not my delivery truck. But we do have the ability to do that. And that is in the discretion of of the council. Well, I'm just getting the residents would probably let us know if there was a problem and then we could do some monitoring if necessary. And how about restricting the hours of deliveries there? Is that reasonable? The staff have a recommendation to that other places, and I don't want to be overly restrictive. But on the other hand, you know, I can certainly understand that weighing a truck to pull in at 530 in the morning. You know, when I live close to that facility. Yes, councilman, I don't know what their business model, how they're operating. However, if you look at just the traffic conditions and you look at kids going to school and things of that nature, this business is busiest during the morning. So it would be best that we had something if we restricted deliveries to be something after nine and before three, because after three, traffic picks up again on seventh Street. So between nine and three would probably be the best time for deliveries. So basically you're saying keep the delivery away from the peak hours, the busy hours of the restaurant of the establishment? That's correct. Okay. All right. Well, I want to go ahead and make a motion motion to approve the recommendation with a few mitigations. One would be to restrict deliveries to two days a week to restrict the hours of delivery away from the busy hours, to request city staff to do a traffic study. An appropriate time of six months as your time. That's certainly good with me, but I want to look at the entire neighborhood issues to see if there's people that are cutting down Santiago and heading over, you know, in that area to try and get out to Bellflower. There may be some issues that exist today, so I do want a more macro study, not just looking at the Dunkin Donuts facility. All of that certainly should be included. The applicant mentioned that they were willing to contribute $10,000 toward that effort, so we should take them up on that. I would also like the city traffic engineer to work with the applicant to design some appropriate signage on that facility that prevents the know right turn onto Flint. And again, we might do maybe something more restrictive after you've done your traffic study, but let's at least begin with that. And then also to come up with some appropriate signage that might say no outlet towards the alley, residents only. You know, hopefully we can be a little creative on the solution there. And that's my motion with those restrictions. Excuse me, Councilman DeLong, just so I'm clear on the motion. You said you were following staff recommendations. So I assume that your motion also includes upholding the decision of the Planning Commission approving the categorical exemption site plan review conditional use permit, which would allow the demolition of the existing structures and the construction of the 899 square foot establishment with drive thru. Correct. Okay. There's been a there's been a motion in a second. And we do have some people that are cued up with with a couple of questions. I'm going to allow Constable Robson, who with the second speak and then we'll go to the queue. Thank you. I guess this question is for the the Dunkin Donuts folks. And the question is, is there a way to mitigate the audibility concern at the drive thru outside of a speaker? Is there a touch touch screen option to ensure that it that the noise won't impact the residents? Yeah, there is a touch screen option and we've I mean, we can go back we've oriented towards seventh Street so it's directly pointing away from the neighborhood. And you know, if the city wants to, you know, to move it further and look at it, we're open to that. I mean, we've tried to be sensitive to any noise coming back into the neighborhood. Councilman, would you be open to a friendly amendment to add that option? Absolutely. Thank you for the suggestion. Thank you. Okay. I have I do have since I did have a question also of staff, I heard the discussion about the the classification of the restaurant. And Councilman DeLong brought that up. So I know that we have I think one gentleman mentioned we have one drive thru Starbucks. And I think we have to I think drive thru Starbucks in Long Beach one being over by the airport. Are both of those classified in the same way? Or what's the classification? And obviously, they're not adjacent to to to residential, but what's the classification difference at the same time? Yes, sir. They would be the classification would be ready to eat. However, in those situations, they are not adjacent to residential. Right. And what and listen, I'm not certainly not a traffic engineer. I'm wondering. However, on Seventh Street, was there ever consideration. About having the entrance and exit to the facility on seventh and not on Flint. Okay. We were doing rock, paper, scissors here again. But no, actually, that's why we're concentrating the access points there at the alley by widening the alley. If you think about it, if you're at a at a location trying to exit onto a busy street, the car that's in the third lane that's coming towards you and entering provides you the gap to get in. So by contin by getting rid of the four driveways and, and concentrating at the alley and widening it, most people that are heading eastbound, going to this site are not going to go to Flint to pass the Dunkin Donuts to come back to the Dunkin Donuts. They're going to enter at the alley and get in the stream of the drive thru. So it's going to provide the most gaps for people to get out. That's why not having driveways closer to the intersection and moving them back provides that in and out movement at one location. Mr. Rosen, can you make a currently right turn onto Flint from seventh? Yes. Okay. And so was it considered at any point for the entrance and the exit to be on seventh and not on Flint? To not include Flint? In the current configuration with a drive thru lane, that would not be possible. One of the very earliest iterations that we saw had the entire facility oriented separately so that the parking was in front and that would have provided that ability to have a single entrance off of Seventh Street. However, that puts the drive thru directly adjacent to a residential property within five feet. And one of the biggest issues that we have with drive thrus is in fact creating as much separation as possible and always orienting the drive thru lane towards the busiest street. So we required the drive thru lane to be abutting seventh street specifically to reduce nuisance. Okay. But so obviously in this configuration you have in front of us, clearly there's the we have the Flint entrance and exit. But you did look at that as a possibility. So in this configuration are possible, but it certainly is possible in another configuration that certainly would have moved the drive thru, but it would have been possible . Is that correct? It would have been possible. It would have been an inferior design and it would have resulted in two curb cuts along Seventh Street because the alley curb cut would still remain in this configuration. We get it down to the one consolidated curb cut, which, as Mr. Husband said, is safer from a traffic standpoint. Are there along Seventh Street. I'm trying to remember we all do that drive so often. Are there any other other streets that you're not able to make a right turn on to from seventh adjacent to Flint? Like leading up to Flint? I mean, certainly you can't make a left coming the other way on. Yeah, there, there, there. Right turn is required if you're exiting on the seventh and right turns are allowed in and you can't make a left in or left out or go straight across. So all up and down seventh with within this pathway, you can make a right onto it. And then when you get down to Santiago, we also have a no U-turn condition. Okay. And then my question was, I, I heard maybe there was a difference to what it seems like there was some type of the traffic analysis that was mentioned during the hearing that was done internally by the city or was that done by the applicant or what was that traffic analysis that was done? Exactly. I understand the applicant in his testimony said that he has traffic data. I don't I don't he gathered some. I don't have that. We did. I sent one of my staff members out for the 3 hours from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. to count all the driveways and all the access points where people came in, where they went out. And when we did that kind of as a summary, we found that there was a total of 127 vehicles that entered the site and went to the Dunkin Donuts over that time period. So if you're trying to count apples and apples, that's that's almost 100 trips per hour that are going in and out of this site. So it's on order of the same numbers that that we've been hearing all along here. So the existing donut shop, I think Bill here was was right. You're you're it does a lot more business than people think it does. So our accounts show about 50 cars an hour that are coming in and, you know, people stopping and getting donuts and coffee. So that's what we found on the existing site. Okay. Councilmember Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I just had a question for Councilmember DeLong in with the addition of the request for the traffic study, which I think you suggested would be a six month macro study, is and that is to be done prior to any further movement on on the project? No. What Mr. Roseman said is you have to have the project in operation for six months in the study, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to measure the traffic on Flynt to see if that one way is better or worse. So it's a full impact study on the proposed use. After the proposed use has been there for six months. And looking at the macro neighborhood, just not on the Dunkin Donuts impact because there may be other impacts. I see. Thank you. That's word Johnson. Well, thank you, Vice Mayor. And I want to thank everyone who came out here to speak tonight. I actually drove through the property myself today. I drive by several times a week to take a look at it. And it is kind of interesting layout. And it's true that we make a run in Flint. You really are right are in the middle of intersection. One question for staff sounds like one of the primary concerns here is know cut through traffic in the neighborhood. And we talked about that, the potential traffic study. Do you in your professional opinion, do you see or cut through traffic either through the alley or through Flint or or not? I don't suspect that there will be. However, I, I also admitted at the Planning Commission that I don't know everything. So that's why we were proposed to do this study after it was opened. Because if if we are wrong, then we can take action in order to address it. However, if most people that are going to this site are coming westbound on seventh Street, most likely they're continuing westbound on seventh Street onto the freeway, going into the neighborhood to try to get back to seventh Street. I think he meant eastbound. I'm sorry, eastbound. And rather than going and going through the neighborhood to get back to eastbound seventh Street or on this on the PCH, that is one of the slowest ways to get back other than just going right out of the driveway that you came in or off on on Flint or across the way. Actually, some people do it today. I don't know if anybody noticed it, but in the video that was shown, I saw a car do it as well, go through the vitamin shop and go straight on to Pacific Coast Highway and exit. So those are pretty quick ways to get out of the site. Going through the neighborhood down to Sixth Street, all the way down to Manila around the frontage road. Make a left turn on to Bellflower to get back up to PCH, across PCH to to Seventh Street. That's a number of traffic signals, a number of turns. It's much, much slower than just exiting on the seventh Street. Okay. And one concern I had and I heard from the residents was the ability to make this U-turn from the exit. And it is you know, right now the alley is very narrow and we are requiring it to get wider, which I think is a positive improvement. Some cars may be able to make that U-turn. Some cars may not. I'm not an expert on it. But do you feel that our cars will be able to make that U-turn or or not? If they can't, it does it become a multi point turn or what do you expect to happen if a car is trying to make that U-turn there from the exit? Yeah, it's it's sufficiently wide for the vast majority of cars to make that turn. If you think about the width of the alley being about 27 feet and the width of the about 18 feet, is it for the drive through? It's 27 plus 18. I mean, you can do the math and look at your own car and see what's the turning radius of that. Hey, guys, we have to we think we got to have this between us. So no comments from the audience, please. So I don't suspect that the vast majority of cars would have a have a difficult time making that U-turn. Okay. And if the if the residents are right and we don't know because we haven't seen the empirical data, we don't know what's going to happen until it happens. But if there is neighborhood cut through traffic, what are what would our tools be to prevent that? I think all of us want to see that seventh street traffic stay on Seventh Street. And how do we what would we do if that were to occur? A no right turn out of the driveway on Flint to go into the neighborhood. Would legally prevent that that exiting and then some type of signage on the alley that would prohibit southbound traffic in the alley. But we also heard from one of the residents here earlier that they talked about didn't want to have his right, his alley restricted because of the orientation of his garage in the alley. So, I mean, that would legally do it. However, we know that people do violate signs and that's we're having a traffic study and studying it afterwards. If it continues to be a problem, that's when this one way possibility that that Councilman DeLong has talked about could be discussed with neighbors. But neighbors would have to agree to that. Their self-regulating, their own travel to their homes. Right. And what about in terms of the traffic study? Walk me through the pros and cons of having a traffic study after the establishment opens versus doing it beforehand. So it sounds like some of the folks here want a traffic study first. What are the pros and cons of doing it first versus doing it after the establishment opens? Well, doing it first is really kind of what we've done. We've we've seen from the neighbors a traffic study in which they they believe that there will be impacts in the neighborhood. You've heard from me that I don't believe that there will be impacts in the neighborhood. So, you know, where do you go? You have a very busy street. You have a couple of access points. It really comes down to where people how people are going to access the site and how people are going to leave the site. It's one opinion against another. That's why going forward in constructing the the property and then having the ability to do that study afterwards. There's no discussion as to what's happening because you're studying what is what really did happen. And then have the having the ability to take action afterwards and having the developer on the hook to work with us actually is the best of both worlds, I believe. Okay. Thank you. I'm up a couple questions. And I want to thank the neighbors who I met with a couple of weeks ago and also the developer met with them as well and also did some study in between. And this is a difficult decision tonight, there's no doubt about it. And I don't know if there's a simple answer tonight. Let me ask a question here with regard to there was something Vice Mayor Garcia brought up, and it had to. Do with options. So what I'm hearing. From staff tonight and please feel free to try to give me as much information on this. As you can, is that you feel that this is. The best alternative. There are no other superior alternatives. Yes, sir, we do. We've been working through these issues for a number of months, and we do believe that we have provided appropriate conditions of approval and appropriate design controls and that this is the best solution. And moving. Moving to the restaurant, the ready to eat. Establishment, whatever you're labeling it. To the rear of the facility, does not necessarily solve the problem, because that was my easy answer. And what I'm hearing tonight is maybe it's not. No, sir. It actually creates more problems, particularly for those adjacent residents who live right next to the fence. So our first our first order of business is to look at the potential nuisance activities related to the drive thru. And the first thing we always do is orient them as far away as possible from residential uses and towards the noisy street. And so that is why the, the facility is oriented the way it is. Additionally, I think the applicant did mention we did require them to meet code for the queuing and as I understand it, they are exceeding that so that there is additional queuing as well. Well, if they did, what if they did not exceed it? Would there be a better option if they simply sat at code and there was some other option? No, I don't think that that is is would help. We actually prefer larger queuing lines than shorter queuing lines because you then have, for example, the in and out situation where a queuing is just not enough. So we would actually prefer larger queuing than than less. Okay. I mean, we're not anticipating this is going to be an in and out situation. And no, sir, we're not. But I am giving you an example of, you know, the queuing and problems with having a shorter queue than what we have in place right now. Okay. A couple more questions with regard to the alley and maybe Councilmember DeLong, you can weigh in on this. What does your motion specifically address the alley? Because I see the alley as an easy path out of here from the drive thru in particular. Certainly I might if I could just at the end of that drive thru. Shouldn't you shouldn't you 45 it so you send cars. Away from the alley. So the alley is, as the residents pointed out, ten feet wide. But the site plan shows a five foot dedication, plus a 12 foot drive aisle to have a combined new improved alley of 27 feet wide for that portion of the property. Then there is a six foot median and then a 12 foot drive thru lane. So that constitutes the potential turning radius for a car exiting the drive thru in the back or rear of the site. The alley does go back down to a ten foot alley figure. You know, it is incredibly narrow. So there is a condition already in place that does require signage at the alley that would prevent traffic from going into the alley. It is our expectation that that is where the signage would go, where the throat of the alley narrows down to the to the ten feet towards the rear of the site. And again, the residents would have the option of making that a one way with some outreach, etc.. Correct? They would. But that I believe the traffic engineer has looked at that and that would create difficulties for the residents that currently access their garages. A number of their garages are oriented, oriented so that they have to come off of Seventh Street. If it were a one way alley northbound. A number of the residents would actually not be able to access their garages. It makes sense. I understand that. Councilor Councilman, I have one other comment on that. I know numbers are hard for people to understand. A lot of times what is what is 27 feet and 18 feet equal or equals 45 feet wide? And if you look at most residential streets in the city, they're about 36 feet wide, curb to curb. And and if you take the parking off of that, this is nine feet wider. So if you can go to your residential street with your car and start at one curb and make a U-turn and have nine feet past that curb, you can make a U-turn here. And I think looking at your. Measurements, your plan, I think you're. Correct there. I guess I just. Look at that alley as an. Invitation for someone to shoot down. And as has been described this evening, that, you know, people are in a hurry, especially when they're going to this establishment is probably going to be in the morning and. The alley looks like an invitation. So whatever devices we can come up with to address that, I think would be positive. And with with regard to the copy, is it prescribed in the copy that the the Director of development would have all tools necessary to address neighborhood impacts in the future. Some tools, all tools. But what empowers you to do this? There is a condition of approval. That allows. The the. Plans to be modified either through the site plan review committee or minor modifications made at the discretion of the Director of Development Services. So we could require, as a matter of course, that some additional landscaping be created towards the rear where that trash, enclosure and transformer are located. To make it even more obvious that the alley narrows down to ten feet at that throat. And that would be within existing discretion when you set the hours of operation on a up. They cannot be modified without going back to the Planning Commission. I do not have that discretion on a copy. So if, for example, you approve the CFP, which currently has operating hours of 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.. If Dunkin Donuts wanted to come back and change their hours of operation and stay open longer, they would be required to have a brand new hearing on that copy at the Planning Commission. So I do not have that level of discretion under the copy. Okay. Understood. With regard to the hours. But when we speak to, you know, we're going to do a traffic study. It's going to be six months into the operation. What if there are things that need to be addressed? Then what discretion would you have? What authority would you have to have them addressed? Yes, sir. We actually have the condition of approval that generally speaks to that. And we can revise the condition of approval to match what the counsel is is potentially directing us to do. But there's an existing condition of approval that requires traffic counts and corresponding reports to be submitted by the applicant at six months and one year after the issuance of a C AVO and it would be reviewed by the city traffic engineer and then the traffic engineer would have the ability to require the applicant to develop and implement traffic control changes on the site, potentially including but not limited to pavement markings, generalizations and signage to address the impacts at the applicant's cost. So we do have a built in mechanism that does provide the traffic engineer discretion based on the results of the traffic counts. We would have to modify this condition slightly in order to include a macro study of the entire neighborhood. But in essence, it's it's in the conditions of approval now. So what you're telling me is, if there are problems discovered. Six months into the operation. You have the tools to address them, be it the alley, be it some other impact. Yes, sir. We believe we do. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember DeLong. 27 feet is not 27 plus 18. In 2017. A plan to. I'll call for the question. Can we have Councilmember Lonzo kick Councilman Johnson? I call for the question, Vice Mayor. But we have one more question and called duty objection to that. I object. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry. Johnson and I apologize. Staff, if you've already answered this. But one thing that's come up, I think I heard Councilman O'Donnell allude to this is what about the possibility of forcing people to exit directly on the seventh? And could you explain to me why is that a good idea or a bad idea or why that wasn't chosen? I'm sure that was considered in the plan. We do not believe that we have the ability to have a direct exit on Seventh Street and still allow the drive thru to be remain in its current configuration. It would effectively be turned either towards Flint or the alley or adjacent to the residential. So we believe that this is the the most satisfactory condition, which does allow the combination of a combined exit on to Seventh Street through the alley and the drive through facing seventh Street. Okay. Well, you know, I think this is a difficult issue. And I do think we have a good developer who is trying to do the right thing. And I want to you know, I do think Dunkin Donuts is a great product and I do want us to be business friendly, but we have to balance out their neighborhoods . And I hear their concerns. And I you know, what I'm thinking about is we've heard a lot of extremes, perhaps, you know, both ways. But there's got to be a compromise here to respect neighborhood life and have a great development that I think really will be a positive improvement. So I just don't think we're quite there yet. So what I'd like to do is make a most obstinate motion to our staff to go back to the community and discuss traffic mitigation measures before we come back here, whether it's doing a traffic study or having that conversation, I don't think we've fully vetted that and come back here and I don't know if there'll be 30 days or some period of time and we have this hearing. So that would be my subsidy of motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Conservative. Yeah. You know, I've had numerous meetings about this with staff as well as residents. Mr. Roseman, is there something we missed in regard to traffic mitigation? Because I am open to additional measures if they're there and we've missed something and I don't mind going back to community, but what would we offer them? Do you have other things that we could look at for traffic mitigation that we haven't thought about? You know, I, I don't know. I mean, Seventh Street is still going to be seventh Street is still going to be busy. The site is still going to be where the site is. And we've taken four access point or five access points, including Flint, and turn it into two to try to minimize the impacts to traffic flow and improve access in and out. So, you know, I, I don't know what else we would study. Okay. Well, thank you. Then I'll make a substitute substitute, which is all the original recommendations and mitigations and I put on as well as that friendly amendment. And then also I'd like to add that city staff would work with Caltrans since they control the the Iron Triangle intersection to see if we can't do those keep clear of pavement markings at seventh and Flint because I have seen in Los Alamitos and other places where they're very effective at keeping intersections open, which would allow people to have an easier turn and not necessarily have to rely on a good Samaritan. Kate. Is there a second case you're gonna second on the substitute substitute? That's the final motion being the third substitute on the floor. And did we want to before we check it out, Mr. Duncan, repeat the mitigations for that we that were described for the first motion at clear Mr.. Are. The mitigations that are recorded is to approve the requirement. This is in your first motion approved recommendation as amended with additional conditions to one restrict deliveries to do two days per week during non busy hours to require city staff to conduct a macro traffic study in six months. Three Require the applicant to contribute $10,000 towards a traffic study cost for require the applicant to work with staff to develop appropriate signage to potentially prohibit a right turn onto Flint, as well as alley signage indicating that there is no outlet from the alley or signage indicating that the alley that the alley use is intended for residents . And now this new and that. And then finally, let me see if I can scroll down here. And then finally to require your applicant to install and locate a touchscreen drive thru ordering system that will minimize noise to the adjacent residential properties. Okay. Okay. Just words. It. Plus the new one. I added it working with Caltrans on making clear that. That would be the six. And Mr. Vice Mayor, I just one point of clarification. I have the same notes that Mr. Herrera indicated. But in regard to the six months study, it was my understanding that the six months study would be six months after the beginning of operation as opposed to six months from. That's correct, because. We want to make sure that whatever traffic volume is there so we can study it. Okay. There there is a there's a substitute. Substitute on the motion that was just read by Mr. DeLong. Members, please go ahead and cast for your vote on the substitute substitute motion. Motion carries five votes. Two votes? No. Okay. The hearing is concluded. The motion carries. And we're going to go ahead and go on now to. Public comment. Yeah. Greer the first speaker for public comment. Mr. Clarke. Story breaks. For speakers. Warren Branch. Yeah.