Winter Park board considers allowing fast food on Fairbanks

Fast food might just have a place along Fairbanks Avenue.

Winter Park’s Planning and Zoning Board took a step toward allowing certain kinds of fast food along Fairbanks Avenue on Tuesday, approving a change to the comprehensive plan that would allow fast food restaurants along the main thoroughfare on a case-by-case basis.

The new ordinance allows restaurants with some fast food characteristics to be given conditional uses along Fairbanks Avenue if approved by the city – a step in a different direction from the fast food ordinance passed in September 2013, which banned such restaurants along Park Avenue. The language from that law included a list of criteria for what makes a restaurant “fast food,” which included payment before food is consumed, customers busing their own tables and disposable tableware.

Restaurants that show at least two of these traits have been prohibited from joining Park Avenue ever since. Meanwhile, BurgerFi and Panera Bread along Park Avenue are protected under a grandfather clause and must follow specific regulations laid out by the city.

Tuesday’s agenda item came about after a Dunkin Donuts recently approached the city about building a new location along the north side of Fairbanks Avenue near the Triangle Auto Parts. Planning and Community Development Manager Jeff Briggs said the city realized that its current definition of fast food not only prohibits Dunkin Donuts, but other sit-down restaurants that have become more desirable as well, due to them meeting two of the “fast food” criteria.

Many eateries along Fairbanks today would be banned under the 2013 definition of fast food if they hadn’t been grandfathered in, including 4 Rivers and B&B Junction, Briggs said, adding that the new ordinance will now allow such restaurants to continue to be built along Fairbanks while keeping out the undesirable chains.

“What we need to do obviously is make some kind of change to the rules regarding restaurants on West Fairbanks,” Briggs said. “It’s never been the intention that the city have a policy to prohibit fast casual establishments where you go in, order at a counter and consume your meal, but that’s the situation we’re facing.”

But local residents along Fairbanks Avenue weren’t pleased with the proposed changes, fearing that drive-through restaurants could still slip through the cracks and worsen existing traffic problems cutting through their neighborhoods.

“This area north of Fairbanks up to Lake Killarney is a very unique neighborhood,” resident Doug McKnight said. “The only way in and out of that neighborhood is to come into the city of Winter Park on Fairbanks…. My concern is that any drive-through on the north side of Fairbanks between Blue Heron and Orange Terrace is going to create more unwanted traffic in that neighborhood.”

“We have to time when I go to the grocery store because it’s just crazy,” resident Valli Boungard said.

“We’re really concerned about the quality of our lives – it’s very stressful living in that area…. If you’re going to do conditions, we would hope that you would put drive-throughs on the [south] side of [Fairbanks]. We’re just really concerned about people who are going to be zipping through there.”

Planning and Zoning Board member Shelia De Ciccio assured residents that offering conditional uses would in fact allow the city to get exactly what they want and place certain conditions on the restaurants, including operating hours, buffering walls and noise regulations.

“That will benefit you much more, because you can give us a list of problems and we as a board can address that and make a decision on should we approve it or not approve it,” she said.

The proposed changes will go before the City Commission during their March 25 meeting.