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Monday, Aug. 3, 1998
Forget pulling up to the next window; try the next town
Cities ban drive-through windows in hopes of reducing traffic, noise and air pollution
By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated PressCARRBORO, N.C. - Grady Sturdivant is a small-town guy. His Friendly Barber Shop on Main Street looks pretty much the way it must have when he opened it in 1961. The silver-haired Sturdivant wears an old-fashioned white smock with his name embroidered on it. He still slaps around hot lather and uses a straight razor to shave your neck. All for $9.
But Carrboro, a former textile mill town, is now a trendy community in the booming Research Triangle, and it's taking the small-town thing a bit too far, the 64-year-old barber says.
``I think it's a very stupid thing to do,'' he says. The ``thing'' is the town council's recent vote to ban new drive-through businesses downtown. The reasoning behind the June 9 vote: To preserve Carrboro's ``village'' feel.
``That's kid talk,'' Sturdivant says between snips. ``I mean, that's talking about stuff you dream about back 50 years ago or something. You can't stop progress.''
But if the drive-through represents the road to progress, Carrboro's not the only town looking to change lanes.
In 1996, Sierra Madre, Calif., officials put the kibosh on new drive-through restaurants to cut down on noise, light and traffic. This spring, the swallows returned to San Juan Capistrano, but any plans for new drive-ups in the historic California mission town went south.
Now, Atlanta City Councilman Lee Morris is proposing to halt Ronald McDonald's march to the sea.
To Ron Fennel, senior vice president of the Georgia Hospitality & Travel Association, the proposal is nigh unto blasphemy.
``It is an American tradition,'' Fennel says of the drive-through.
It's also big bucks.
According to the National Restaurant Association, about a third of the $103 billion spent on fast food last year came from drive-up customers. At the thousands of McDonald's restaurants that have drive-throughs, about half of sales go through the window, company spokeswoman Julie Cleary says.
The pick-up window also has become an indispensable part of the banking and dry cleaning industries.
Beset by rampant development and under federal pressure to improve air quality, cities are looking for new solutions. The drive-through is an easy target.
Too easy, complains Bill Sieber. ``I think this is an arbitrary attack on convenience,'' he says.
Sieber is president of E.F. Bavis & Associates, a suburban Cincinnati company that makes nothing but drive-through equipment. One of its products, the Vittleveyor, makes it possible for fast-food restaurants to serve more than one lane of drive-through traffic at a time.
Towns like Carrboro and Sierra Madre, he says, are bucking a consumer trend that fueled his company's 28 percent growth last year. Some retailers - CVS and Rite-Aid pharmacies, for instance - no longer build stores without drive-throughs, he says.
John Shelton Reed, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, is against the ban in principal if not in practice. Reed lives in the drive-through-free zone of Chapel Hill, ``which I appreciate, since I live about unwrapping distance from Hardee's.''Post your comments about local news eventsFront Page || Main Index || News || Business || Texas || South Texas Outdoors || Birdwatching || Sports || Entertainment || Selena || Education || South Texas Attractions || World Wide Web