Duryea Group Seeks Zoning Change for Taco Bell Drive-Through in Quincy

The Duryea Group, Inc. of Quincy will go before the Plan Commission on Tuesday seeking a permit to add a drive-through to a Broadway property that is currently zoned downtown general business, a zoning classification that does not permit drive-through restaurants. The developer's proposal was described in local coverage as creating roughly 25 construction and restaurant jobs.

Local addresses tied to the proposals include 826 Broadway, the former Hess Auto Agency where a second Quincy Taco Bell has been planned, and Duryea Group's existing holdings at 3828 Broadway, the current Quincy Taco Bell, and 3819 Broadway, the Steak 'n Shake the company also owns. The car dealership that occupied 826 Broadway moved to 1124 N. 24th last winter, freeing up the site for redevelopment.

Design figures circulating for a second Taco Bell at 826 Broadway specify a 2,114 square foot building, a reduction of about 450 square feet from an earlier design, with 28 seats down from a previously proposed 48. Those plans also call for two drive-through lanes, with one lane dedicated to picking up mobile orders. It remains to be confirmed whether the Duryea Group application that will appear before the Plan Commission specifically applies to the 826 Broadway parcel.

City planning staff have flagged traffic queueing on Broadway as a central concern for any drive-through approval. Chuck Bevelheimer, director of planning and development, said, "The biggest issue on Broadway is making sure that they have an appropriate stacking distance, so they don't block Broadway traffic. In the past, we've had that issue happen before. However, I think fast-food restaurants have addressed that by changing out their windows to double stacks and so forth." The Plan Commission review will include scrutiny of stacking distance and site circulation to prevent drive-up lanes from spilling into Broadway traffic.

The Taco Bell proposal arrives amid other Broadway development activity. Tom Marx of CTM Holdings LLC plans a 9,000 square foot retail center at 3418 Broadway on a site that was previously a tire store. Marx said his company has one tenant lined up but he could not reveal it, and he estimated construction could start in the fourth quarter of this year with a build schedule of "about 10 and a half months."

Operators and designers elsewhere are pointing to the dominance of drive-through business in Taco Bell operations. Mark Raymond, project manager with DDO Foods, has said, "Seventy-five percent of our business comes through the drive-thru. Of the other 25%, less than 5% of that is actually dine-in service. The remainder of it is third-party digital." National concepts from Taco Bell have explored multi-lane, tech-enabled drive-through prototypes, but those chain concepts have not been tied to the Quincy application.

The Plan Commission packet for Tuesday should reveal site plans, stacking diagrams and the developer's employment assumptions. If the permit and any required zoning changes are approved, the project would add a second Taco Bell presence on Broadway and join CTM Holdings' 3418 Broadway strip mall in reshaping that corridor.