View From a Height

McGrow Up

A local neighborhood group near East Colfax has planted yellow signs all over their front yards to protest the planned arrival of - a use car lot? a tattoo parlor? a whorehouse disguised as a motel? No, that symbol of corruption and neighborhood decay everywhere - a McDonald's!

For several months, McMad has been holding weekly demonstrations at the former used car lot that would be home to McDonald's. More than 2,400 residents have signed a petition opposing the chain's plans. Many people might be surprised that another fast-food restaurant on Colfax would even be controversial, but those who are McMad say that is exactly the problem.

"We want different kinds of businesses on Colfax," said Kris Bergquist, who lives in the area. "We want a strip where you pull up and get out and visit several shops. We all want Colfax to change."

What started as concern over the impact of a drive-through lane on a quiet residential block of Krameria Street has escalated into a demand for wholesale revision of the city's zoning for Colfax - and city officials seem ready to oblige.

...

"There's an apartment building where people will look through their windows right into the drive-through," said Sandra Adams, who lives just behind the site. "We're saying don't destroy our neighborhood."

Many residents thought the type of building allowed on East Colfax would change when the city approved its Blueprint Denver land use plan in 2002. That plan calls for pedestrian-oriented construction on Colfax, with ground-level retail and apartments and condos on upper floors. However, the city still hasn't revised the zoning for Colfax to reflect the goals of Blueprint Denver, and McDonald's has the right to build under the current B-4 zoning.

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For its part, McDonald's believes it is trying to do something nice for the area and is being unfairly criticized as some sort of blemish on Colfax.

"This will be the nicest building for several blocks," said Chuck O'Rourke, the franchisee who wants to build the new McDonald's. "We'll have a very contemporary building with minimum signage and maximum landscaping. We're reinvesting in East Colfax."

O'Rourke owns the McDonald's at Colfax Avenue and Glencoe Street, which has been open for 38 years and will be closed once the new location is complete. He said a new building is needed with more parking and a better drive-through. At the request of Denver officials, O'Rourke said, the new drive-through is being redesigned to funnel traffic on and off Colfax and away from the residential area to the north.

How is this faulty? Let us count the ways.

1. What's There Now
Here, arranged map-like for your convenience, is the current layout of the intersection of North Krameria and East Colfax:

And this woman is afraid it will spoil the view? Look, I understand these people wanting something better than the rest of Colfax. With the exception of the couple of neighborhoods they cite (more on them later), the place is an open wound on an otherwise pleasant body civic. But you've gotta be hittin' the Special Sauce pretty hard to think that a McDonald's won't be an improvement over what's down there now. There are two, two abandoned buildings, boarded up, just waiting to attract rats and possibly rodents, and these guys want to wait for Just the Right Developer to come along.

2. Basic Property Rights
The property owner has a deal. He's going to be collecting rent, finally, providing some jobs to the local gentry of the high school kind, and he's completely within the zoning laws. Now, in Imitation of Linda Cropp, the city council is considering pulling the rug out from under him. They going to compensate him for lost rent? For opportunity cost of having to play their games when he could be working on other deals? Somehow, that part didn't make it into the papers.

Speaking of property rights...

3. A Subsidy of Good Times
Take a close look at that northwest corner again. Yes, it's a Good Times burger joint. With a drive-thru. Now, they didn't pay for a monopoly on grilled ground beef in the area, but they're going to get one, aren't they? Personally, I know of no studies showing that Good Times's burgers are better for you than McDonald's burgers. If the Good Times clientele isn't leaving wrappers on the neighbors' front yards, why will the McDonald's patrons? Conversely, if the morning paper comes hooded in a Good Times paper bag, why aren't the neighbors complaining about that?

4. Neighborhood they want to emulate
In addition to this and this (where I started writing this piece this afternoon), the neighborhood they mention as a model also has...this! So apparently, not all forms of mass franchising are created equal. There's no question that the Steele St. intersection is nicer than most of East Colfax. I'd use it as a model too, but...

5. McDonald's Has Room to Design
Neither McDonald's nor O'Rourke wants to come into a hostile neighborhood. So they've already redesigned the drive-thru so it uses Colfax rather than the toddler-laden Krameria. This was their original objection, after all. They could probably fix it so it was a little more upscale, too. In my experience, a McDonald's is as nice as it wants to be. There are Brooklyn McDonald's, where homeless guys in wheelchairs linger on long after they've left, and then there are McLean McDonald's, where they ask for tax returns at the counter. There's no reason at all the place couldn't use its exterior to market itself as a nice place.

6. Where are the signs, anyway?
Ah, now it gets nasty. Some of these signs are in the neighborhood. Some of them are so in the neighborhood, they're at the corner of Monaco & Colfax. For people who have to Stop, Look Both Ways, and wait for the crossing guard to go from their living rooms to their kitchens, don't you think it's a little late to be worried about traffic?

Others of these signs are Far, Far Away. One of them is near Crestmoor Park, where Sage chases squirrels when the dogcatcher isn't looking. That's 14 blocks away. Which makes me think the real problem is...

7. Wal Mart Envy
Not wishing that they had a Wal Mart, but wishing that they had a Wal Mart to protest. They don't, so they have to settle for McDonald's. Look at the name of the group, McMad. That's calculated to conjure up images of calm, reasoned discussion of people coming together to solve problems. The Links page lists other neighborhoods that successfully fought McDonald's. It opposes their "clogging our arteries and our side streets."

If they don't want McDonald's, there's a simple answer: don't go there. It's not like the place is lacking for competition. The aforementioned Good Times aside, there's a Burger King at Quebec, a cafe at Krameria and 14th, and a donut shop on the other side of Monaco. These places rely on neighborhood traffic to a large extent, and if the locals boycott the place, they won't be around for long.