Three Years After It Was First Proposed, Hurley Planners Approve Dunkin' Plan by Maya Schubert/Kingston Wire
The Town of Hurley Planning Board gave conditional approval Wednesday morning to a plan to build a Dunkin’ drive-thru at the intersection of state Routes 28 and 375. The vote may be the final chapter of the three-year saga of the proposal.
The board’s unanimous approval came after a previous board rejection of the project, centered around locals’ concerns that a drive-thru would aggravate traffic problems at the intersection, was thrown out by two courts.
“The planning board wants the community to know that the board was aware of the community concerns about this application,” said Chairperson Peter McKnight in a statement Wednesday. “The board tried to review the application as best we could given the constraints which applied to our review.”
The site plan application from Southern Realty and Development met public opposition since first proposed in August 2020 and was denied by the board in January 2022 on the basis of traffic concerns. The following summer, however, state Supreme Court Judge Kevin Bryant ruled that the board had incorrectly conducted the application process for the proposal and violated open meeting laws.
A state appellate court ruled this July that the board had properly conducted the application process, but the court also vacated the planners’ site plan denial for citing what the court found to be “conclusory and unsupported” reasons. The court concluded that Southern Realty already had Department of Transportation approval and adequately addressed traffic concerns in its site plan.
“The board’s decision appears to have been in response to local public opposition, evidenced at least in part by the comment at the gateway meeting indicating that a ‘mom and pop’ restaurant would be more desirable than the project and would have an easier permitting process,” the court wrote. “It is well established that such concerns are not a proper ground upon which the board may base the denial of an otherwise permitted use.”
The appellate court’s decision turned the application back to the planning board for consideration. A public comment period at the board’s July meeting saw a mixture of support and opposition from locals, some pleading for approval to avoid further legal proceedings and others maintaining that potential traffic woes are reason enough for denial. At Wednesday’s special meeting, the board acknowledged the public’s concerns while maintaining responsibility to abide by the courts’ rulings.
“Neither time, nor the court decisions, have changed the views of our board members, who do not agree with the appellate court’s decision that traffic issues have been adequately addressed,” said McKnight. “But despite the board’s continued concerns and reservations about those issues, the board recognized and understood its legal duty to abide by the law, and to follow and implement as best it could the holdings of both the State Supreme Court and the Appellate Division.”
As approved by the board, the Dunkin’ will serve as a drive-thru only and will not serve pedestrians or even cyclists. A provision that restricted any food from being “baked on the property” was struck by the planning board after Southern Realty attorney Charles Gottlieb objected that this violated the property’s allowed use as a restaurant.
“No planning board has the jurisdiction to regulate the internal business operations of a principally permitted use,” he said.
According to Southern Realty’s proposal, food like doughnuts and bagels will be delivered during off-hours. Some items, Gottlieb contended, are frozen and will need to be heated up in an oven.
“You go in for a bagel, you want it toasted,” conceded planning board member Dennis O’Clair. “They need to be able to toast a bagel.”