View From a Height

McMad Revisited

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very nice, very long conversation with Ms. Adams, who appears in the prior posting about McMad and its fight against McDonald's. I came away with the impression that the Rocky had made a couple of mistakes in its reporting. I also see why the neighbors might be a little hacked off at the company. They do have some legitimate complaints. At the same time, they're burying those complaints under a mound of inflated rhetoric, which doesn't bear up under scrutiny.

First, what the Rocky missed. They claimed that the demos were going on outside the vacant buildings - they're not. The protesters demonstrate outside the existing Glencoe St. McD's. This makes much more sense.

Secondly, the claims that seem valid. I can believe that this may not be the best intersection for a drive-thru. Krameria doesn't have a left-turn signal, there's an offset when crossing Colfax, and the Neighbors claim to have a study showing that this intersection is the most dangerous between Monaco and Colorado. (This may well be true; an email request to the group for the numbers went unanswered.) There is a garbage problem from the Good Times across the street, and Ms. Adams front yard will, evidently, have a front-row seat for the traffic exiting onto Leyden.

All of these problems (except for the offset) could be easily fixed by the city. However, there are no plans to put in a left-hand turn signal, nor will the city allow them to put in a "porkchop " to turn the traffic away from the side-streets and back onto Colfax. Between a company they believe has been duplicitous and hostile, and a government that seems utterly unresponsive, I'd be frustrated, too.

(Aside: there are other, unverified claims that they make against McDonald's, the developer, and the franchisee. I haven't spoken to them yet, and I don't wish to repeat them until I do. I mention them here to explain the neighbors' sense of being locked in an iron box, but I don't wish to give them substance without at least giving the other guys a chance to talk. What can I say? I'm busy.)

That said, I think the neighbors' frustration has led them to make claims that are simply wild and unrealistic, in order to garner support from a broader community. For instance, the area that they wish to turn into a Town Center, on the Stapleton or Lowry model is roughly 9 square blocks. Putting a McDonald's on the fringe barely affects the rest of it. Small businesses could easily be lured in, just like the coexist with Panera and Starbucks in other developments. The only signal it sends is, "open for business."

Also, Ms. Adams believes that overlooking a drive-thru from the adjacent apartments is worse that overlooking a parking lot. Except that now, while the parking lot entrance is on the side-street, the actual drive-thru lane is away from the apartments, on the Colfax side of the restaurant.

Ms. Adams also said something about this being "the worst possible business" to put there. Well, I can think of two or three other businesses that Colfax has plenty of that would be worse. Just ask Denny Naegle. She's worried about her daughter playing in the front yard with all the traffic. Fair enough. I'd be more worried about some of the role models for young ladies inhabiting this street out in Aurora.

I also haven't been in touch with Ms. Johnson, but it seems passing strange that a City Councilman can't prevail on the traffic department to bend a few rules and upgrade the intersection. For instance The Grid is hardly sacred.

...where traffic patterns are painful to your gears.
The Lowery development leaves you close to tears!
There are even places where it completely disappears,
Why, in Congress Park they haven't used it for years.

And what's so hard about putting in a left-turn light? It's not as though the traffc engineers in this town know anything about synchronizing the lights, anyway. People would hardly notice.

It seems to me that the bad guy here - to the extent that there is one - isn't the landowner or the restauranteur, but a city government that could solve the problem in one afternoon but chooses not to.