“I know there are traffic issues, but that is not a zoning concern, either. “Anybody can say more people use a Dunkin’ Donuts than a bank, but that is not something I can look at for intensity,” Lunney said. He knows the site is near a congested intersection on a street with small condominium and apartment complexes, multi-family homes, gas stations, dry cleaners, gyms, delicatessens, pizza places, a post office, and other destinations that generate lots of car trips, Lunney told the board.īut a zoning official’s definition of “intense use” is not the same as a layperson’s definition, Lunney said.Ī two-story house with apartments on top and retail space on the bottom, for example, is a more intense use than a two-story house where a single family lives. Lunney said he found no reason to reject a request from the Dunkin’ Donuts owner for a drive-thru lane, as the Wells Fargo Bank had before it. She spoke at the November meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals, when members heard a complaint from the owners of Donut Delight and two residents seeking to have the decision by Zoning Enforcement Officer Jim Lunney overturned. “I don’t know how anyone could think those two things would be equivalent,” Beltran said. “That’s 7.5 times more traffic.”Ī bank is open fewer hours and fewer days a week, and doesn’t draw the volume of customers as a shop that sells doughnuts and coffee and sandwiches made with bagels. “She said they get at least 300 cars a day, probably more,” Beltran said. Then she talked to the drive-thru cashier at Donut Delight, a Dunkin’ Donuts competitor at 274 Hope St. “He said he gets about 40 customers a day,” Beltran said. She talked to the drive-thru teller at M&T Bank next door to the Dunkin’ Donuts site. “It defies common sense,” said Beltran, one of many residents who oppose a drive-thru for 364 Hope St.

The ruling was the basis of a decision to allow a drive-thru for a new Dunkin’ Donuts, once a Wells Fargo Bank branch, on traffic-snarled Hope Street in Beltran’s Glenbrook neighborhood.

STAMFORD – Sarah Beltran didn’t buy it when a zoning official ruled that use of a bank drive-thru is just as intense as use of a doughnut shop drive-thru.

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