Proposed Drive-thru Coffee Shack shows Weakness of MU-III Zoning

When we went through the Our Salem process and designated lots of the south end of Commercial Street in various flavors of "mixed use" zoning, and then subsequently went through a minor revision in the debate over overlay zones, and we talked about how much it was going to help us reduce driving and emissions, an important part of our climate action, were more drive-thrus really what we wanted?

Drive-thru coffee shack proposed

The City has an application for an additional car wash bay and wholly new drive-thru coffee shack for the corner of Judson and Commercial, very near the cemetery.

MU-III zoning here - City of Salem

The parcel is zoned MU-III, and in early returns, this new mixed use zoning does not seem to be inducing very much actual mixed use.

Staff Report from Our Salem, April 2022

More importantly, we continue to allow new drive thrus and all the driving trips they induce. No amount of PR on idling will change that! MU-III zoning was specifically formulated to allow drive-thrus. We saw this out on the new project east of Costco, and now here in a more inner neighborhood.

via FB

We should give more serious consideration to banning new drive-thrus altogether. Our Strong Towns group discussed this some last month.

(Since the MU-III zone is really a continuation of older commercial zoning, mostly just freshened up with a new brand name and a few more allowable uses, we should also consider renaming it to give a more honest high-level view of the amount and intent of actual mixed-use zoning. The City likes to brag about how much new mixed use zoning there is, but much of it seems very unlikely to be used in any spirit of mixed uses. There's too much PR on very theoretical and unlikely possibility and not enough discussion of realistic prospects. With more sober assessments we would be in a better position to iterate and refine so we are more likely to hit in reality our high level goals, which remain remote at the moment.)