SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio — The City of South Euclid is working to make some development changes. City officials are working to limit the amount of fast-food drive-thrus and what the city calls "small box discount retail stores" like Dollar General and Dollar Tree.
The Planning and Development Director for the City of South Euclid, Michael Love, wants to see South Euclid grow to its full potential. Love said the city is finally rebounding from the 2008 housing crisis. More want to make South Euclid home again.
“We went from being a very cold housing market to a very hot housing market,” Love said. “Nothing sits, everything sells very quickly.”
With more families moving in, Love wants to see stores and shopping areas reflect those changes.
“We have always prided ourselves on being a very walkable community pretty much 99 of the streets in South Euclid have public sidewalks,” said Love. “So, we want people to be able to walk we want people to be able to bike.”
To help achieve this, two pieces of legislation were introduced to the city council that are now under review by the planning commission. The first piece of legislation would ban restaurant drive-thrus within the city’s Mayfield-Green and Cedar Center North Districts. Other businesses with drive-thrus like banks and pharmacies, would be excluded from the ban. However, current food-focused drive-thrus would be grandfathered in. For example, drive-thrus- like McDonald's, Mr. Chicken, and Starbucks in the Mayfield-Green District would stay open.
“We know the drive-thru restaurant discourages everything that we want to see in those districts,” Love said. “It doesn't encourage people to be walking, it doesn't encourage pedestrian-friendly development. So, that’s really the reason why those two districts we are looking to not have drive-thrus.”
South Euclid resident of 15 years, Pam Jones, agrees with the possibility of the drive-thru ban. She said S. Green and Mayfield roads get too congested.
“It’s a problem coming in too because of the traffic and how they have the drive-thru set up, also with the chicken place,” Jones said.
The second piece of legislation would limit small box discount retail stores, like dollar stores. Love said they’ve attracted too much crime over the years. The new legislation would also require those stores not to be within one thousand feet of each other.
“Not saying they can’t be here, but regulating them to limit how many there are because one trend we are seeing similar to the trend that happened with the drug stores in the 2000s, now you see that with the dollar stores where they try to be on every single corner,” Love said. “So, that is one thing we are trying to prevent.”
Jones disagrees with that piece of legislation.
“I hope they would not do that because dollar stores are very feasible for people that don’t have a lot of money and get a lot of goods,” said Jones. “I wouldn’t say really quality goods, but they can get a lot of things worth wild that is appeasing to them.”
Under the two pieces of proposed legislation, drive-thrus and dollar stores wanting to open in other parts of the city would need a conditional use permit, granted by the planning commission and city council.
“We want to make sure our zoning code is in place that encourages the type of development we want to see,” said Love.
Now after the planning commission reviews the pieces of legislation, the issued recommendations will be sent to the city council where a public hearing will happen before taking votes. Some changes could be made to what was currently written up. News 5 will continue to follow through on this story.
