The Sandy Springs City Council at its Aug. 19 meeting rejected Whataburger’s request for a drive-through at a proposed location in a Dunwoody Place Shopping Center, leaving its future uncertain.
The Whataburger franchisee planned to tear down the former Wells Fargo bank branch at 8721 Roswell Road that had been closed for more than a year. A new one-story restaurant was proposed to include a drive-through facility, an outdoor patio seating area, and associated landscaping and hardscape amenities.
The Sandy Springs Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of a conditional use permit to allow the drive-through. Their recommendation removed a staff suggestion to limit the drive-through hours, instead allowing 24/7 operations.
Council member John Paulson moved to approve the application. The motion resulted in a tie vote. Council members Paulson, Jody Reichel, and Tibby DeJulio voted for the conditional use. Council members Melody Kelley, Melissa Mular, and Andy Bauman voted against it.
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• Planning Commission recommends 24/7 hours for Whataburger
Initially, when questioned by Bauman, Mayor Rusty Paul said the city charter only allows him to vote affirmatively. However, at the end of the meeting, he admitted his mistake after Sandy Springs City Attorney Dan Lee explained to him that the mayor is not limited to voting affirmatively to break tie votes. He told the clerk to record his vote against the application, joining the dissenters to break the tie.
The proposal had called for the one-story building to be built closer to Roswell Road than the building’s current location, per zoning requirements. The property is zoned CX-3.
A Huntington Place townhome owner and the head of the Sandy Springs Council of Neighborhoods spoke against the drive-through that would be built on an outparcel north of their subdivision along Roswell Road. Huntington Place is the neighboring property to the south of the outparcel.
Huntington Place resident Adrianne Murchison said the greatest issue she had was the 24-hour drive-through. Moving the drive-through to the back of the building wouldn’t make much of a difference, she said, as the back of the townhomes face the site.
“That leaves residents exposed to the speaker system, customer voices, cars idling, headlights shining towards our windows,” Murchison said. “While trees offer some buffer in the summer, they thin considerably in winter and fall, meaning both sound and lights from Whataburger would be intrusive.”
Ronda Smith, president of the Sandy Springs Council of Neighborhoods, said she hoped the city council would take a hard look at drive-throughs in general as future requests come forward.
“Any residential community near this or any future proposed drive-through, particularly a 24-hour drive-through, will be irreversibly changed by that drive-through, as will Roswell Road,” Smith said. “We can’t turn back the clock on the existing drive-throughs here at Dunwoody Place Shopping Center. But just because they are there does not mean we need to compound the issue.”
Dale Friedly, a senior project architect with Warner Summers, spoke on behalf of Made to Order Holdings, the local Whataburger franchisee. He said 99 percent of the trees in the tree buffer on the site between the restaurant site and the Huntington Place townhomes would remain. They also agreed to construct an 8-foot-high opaque wall to help with sound buffering and the block the view from the townhomes.
Friedly told Rough Draft Atlanta after the meeting that the franchisee has not determined if they will build the restaurant without a drive-through.
