The Charlotte City Council voted Tuesday to approve a rezoning that will allow a Chick-fil-A on Randolph Road to tear down its existing restaurant and replace it with a drive-thru-only building.
The vote was controversial because some council members said the decision goes against the goals of the 2040 Plan, which aims to make Charlotte a more walkable, less car-dependent city. Charlotte's plans include ambitious targets for reducing the number of car trips residents take, with the goal of residents making half of all trips in something other than a car by 2040 — a goal not conducive to building a drive-thru-only restaurant in a densifying area.
The vote was 8-3 in favor of the rezoning. Council members Braxton Winston, Renee Johnson and Lawana Mayfield voted no.
Council member Tariq Bokhari, who represents the area, said if council members had rejected the request, Chick-fil-A would have kept its existing drive-thru without making improvements to reduce the regular traffic jams that it causes on Randolph Road when cars waiting for the drive-thru back up into the traffic lanes. The restaurant plans to convert the location into a restaurant with two drive-thru lanes.
“This will be to take an existing use that will be there no matter what on a very dense, highly traveled by vehicles corridor and it will make that incrementally better,” Bokhari said.
City staff agreed with many of the objections raised, including that the drive-thru is inconsistent with the 2040 Plan goals of becoming a more walkable city. But they recommended council approve Chick-fil-A's plan anyway because they said it is the best solution for the congested area.
Staff wrote that “the site design is intended to improve the functionality of the use and the pedestrian and access improvements could provide benefits to the transportation infrastructure in the immediate area.”
Chick-fil-A has had similar trouble at other restaurants notorious around Charlotte for their traffic tie-ups, such as the Woodlawn Road location near Park Road. In a bid to alleviate traffic jams, Chick-fil-A made the Woodlawn Road location drive-thru-only in 2021. In the post-COVID-19 dining world, more restaurants are ditching indoor seating and focusing on serving customers in cars, who account for a large majority of diners at many locations.