Morris Plains residents tell board they’re hungry for McDonald’s to go — away

By Michael Lovito

If all goes according to plan for the owners of the defunct Friendly’s property on Speedwell Avenue, Morris Plains soon could be home to a brand-new McDonald’s drive-through.

But to paraphrase a flyer being handed out at Tuesday’s planning board meeting, not everybody in the Community of Caring is Lovin’ It.

Emotions ran high as the board heard the first round of testimony regarding an application to build an outpost of the fast-food empire at 415–435 Speedwell Ave.

Drive-through restaurants are a permitted use at that location.

But during the three- and-a-half-hour meeting at the Morris Plains Community Center, what’s typically a dry bureaucratic process turned into a lively, and at times unruly, debate about the proposed plan’s effect on traffic and pedestrian safety.

The tone was set early, during project attorney Frank Vitolo’s opening statement, when approximately 120 residents broke out in laughter when he mentioned the property owner’s intent to “improve pedestrian access to the site” by expanding a crosswalk on Speedwell Avenue.

The mood in the room wasn’t improved when Vitolo implied that opponents of the project were engaging in a sort of culinary elitism.

“Trust me, there are and will be in the future many places in Morris Plains and adjoining towns for you to spend a small fortune on restaurants,” Vitolo said. “However, not everyone can afford those prices, and McDonald’s provides at least one alternative.”

Civil engineer Tiago Duarte of Dynamic Engineering was sworn in as the applicant’s first witness and was almost immediately questioned by board member Ron Kelly about the lot’s entrance/exit driveway on Speedwell, and its exit-only driveway on Dayton Road.

After Duarte confirmed that about two-thirds of the proposed restaurant’s customers would make their purchase through the drive-through window, Kelly neatly summed up his skepticism and — if the applause that followed was any indication — the feelings of many of his fellow residents as well.

“That program will actually add to our traffic problem. So, your formatting actually goes against kind of what we’re looking for,” Kelly said. “It strikes me you’re just creating a bottleneck.”

Kelly took particular issue with the exit onto Dayton Road, stating that plans to turn it into a left-turn-only exit failed to take into account “human nature.”

Vitolo and Duarte’s suggestion that the exit could be angled to discourage right hand turns prompted more audience participation.

After asking Kelly if he thought people would be “dumb enough” to “jump over a curb and ruin your car” to make a right onto Dayton, the crowd shouted a unified “yes,” after which one woman yelled “come at rush hour.”

“All right,” Vitolo responded. “I’m gonna open up a spare tire shop then.”

While audience members were more subdued as Duarte fielded questions from the board regarding parking spaces and delivery operations, they let out a long, collective groan when he mentioned that the restaurant planned to operate between 4 am and midnight. (Vitolo later clarified that these hours could be adjusted.)

‘SOMEONE KNOWS ANSWERS THEY SHOULD BE SHARING WITH THE TOWN’

Members of the public appeared unconvinced by the applicant’s plans to improve pedestrian safety on Speedwell Avenue.

Borough resident Dan Conway said he felt McDonald’s owed the town an estimate of how many customers it expected to serve daily.

“We have a unique request here for a two-lane highway with highly trafficked locations, and we need to know, roughly, what is the number of customers serviced at a location like this?” Conway said. “Somewhere in between here, someone knows an answer that they should be sharing with the town.”

Multiple members of the public noted that the proposed location is across the street from both the Joyful Noise Nursery School and the Morris Plains Borough Elementary School. They expressed concerns that expanding the Speedwell crosswalk and adding flashing pedestrian beacons won’t be enough to calm the increased traffic generated by a drive-through McDonald’s.

This led to the tensest exchange of the night. Resident Richard Sackerman laid into both the board and Vitolo, who he claimed “talked down” to the audience.

“The problem is we don’t have a safe way of getting our kids across the street,” Sackerman said. “How can you actually think that is safer for our community and children to do this, just putting in guide lights and mocking our entire place?”

“If you feel better attacking me personally, go right ahead,” Vitolo replied, to a chorus of groans. “We have a bunch of witnesses who can answer your questions. If you don’t like my sense of humor, I apologize.”

After repeated reminders from board Attorney Andrew Brewer that the public should direct its questions to Duarte and refrain from making affirmative statements, the meeting, which lasted until 11 pm, reached a state of relative calm. But Dayton Road resident Karl Ring, who was concerned about the potential of sharing a sewage line with McDonald’s, couldn’t resist one last jab at Vitolo.

“My last question is for you – has no one ever told you that you’re condescending?,” Ring asked, to both laughter and applause.

“You got me there,” Vitolo conceded.

More testimony is scheduled for Oct. 21, 2024, back at the Morris Plains Community Center.

CORRECTION: An engineer for the applicant stated that about two-thirds of customers probably will use the drive-though window. An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported a lower number.