Drive-thru add-on for upcoming Edward J. Roy gas station denied by ZBA

MANCHESTER, N.H. – At the corner of Wellington Road and Edward J. Roy Drive, a combination gas station/convenience store/fast food restaurant is currently under construction without a drive-thru addition, and it looks like it will stay that way for the near future at least.

On Thursday night, the Manchester Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) denied a special exception from city ordinance that would allow a drive-thru component to be added to the currently under construction building.

Site plan approval was denied by the Planning Board in 2018, with that decision remanded by the courts and brought back to the Planning Board in 2020, where it was approved.

Attorney Roy Tilsley told the ZBA that a drive-thru component was removed from plans for the site before its first run through the Planning Board, and told the ZBA that requesting a drive-thru was not prohibited by the Planning Board approval for what is current under construction on the site. Tilsley did not directly address allegations from residents living near the site that the drive-thru component was removed to make it more palatable for the Planning Board.

Unlike the five criteria a ZBA must consider to grant a variance from zoning ordinance, for a special exception in this specific situation, the applicant must meet a variety of criteria in the eyes of the ZBA. Those criteria include not creating undue traffic congestion or impairment of pedestrian safety, not overloading public utilities, not creating an excessive demand for city services, and not create general health or safety hazards just to name a few.

Tilsley and several experts brought by the applicant believed the request could meet those criteria, stating that a queue of 25 cars would be needed to back up the drive-thru line onto Edward J. Roy Drive and bottleneck neighbors trying to get onto Wellington Road, a significant concern of the neighbors when the proposal was before the Planning Board.

The assembled experts also indicated that there would not be a significant shift in traffic counts at the site with the drive-thru added, with customers that would have gone inside instead shifting to the drive-thru use.

Tilsley said the need for that drive-thru came following shifting consumer patterns after the COVID-19 pandemic, although neighbors and members of the ZBA questioned the methodology used to obtain that data given that it was drawn from a book of comparable sites during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when critics of the request noted that demand for such services were much different than now.

Concerns over traffic impacts on Edward J. Roy Drive, noise issues and the environmental impact of idling cars in the drive-thru were also mentioned from several neighbors expressing frustration with the  request.

ZBA Chair Anne Ketterer asked Tilsley if he could state the distance between the drive-thru window and the nearest neighbor, but Tilsley did not have that information readily available.