Will a Dunkin Donuts Fit into Cold Spring’s Historical Village?
The next step for well-known and well-liked Cold Spring repair shop owner Kenny Elmes to get approval to turn his Route 9D repair shop into a mixed-use Dunkin Donuts and convenience store will be to go in front of the village’s Historical Review Board at 8 p.m. on Wednesday May 9.
At that meeting the review board will discuss if the facade of the franchise, now proposed to look like a typical shop in the national chain, will fit into the village center’s historical character.
This was announced during a Cold Spring Planning Board public hearing to discuss the application, at which the board members expressed skepticism that the proposal, which includes a drive-thru window, would match that muster.
“You are a great guy. Everybody loves you,” planning board Chairman Joe Barbaro said to Elmes.
“My thought is, what if a month ago you sold the gas station to ‘John Smith’ in Westchester and he said he was going to turn this into a Dunkin Donuts. Would we be as sympathetic to him as we are to you? We have a duty to be impartial and objective. We have to remember it’s an applicant before us; it’s not Kenny.”
Elmes said he has owned the repair shop for 25 years. Elmes has one prosthetic leg and doctors have warned him he could be in a wheelchair in as little as three to five years. Unable to do the work at the shop he once did, he looked for a prospective buyer, but there were none.
“There are not a lot of options for a repair shop,” Elmes said, addressing criticisms he has received that his proposal could damage the bottom line of independently-owned businesses on Main Street. “I’m not trying to burn anyone. I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s business….it’s not my intention to hurt anyone. It’s basically my only way out.”
Planning Board member Dick Weissbrod said he did not think the building as proposed matched the character of the village’s downtown.
“We all know that we can spot a Dunkin Donuts from seven miles away,” he said. “I started looking for Dunkin Donuts that were different.”
Weissbrod said that he found an outlet of the franchise in Massachusetts that had a facade that looked like the Country Goose shop on Main Street.
“I think these pictures of what we’ve been given here are not going to cut it,” Weissbrod said, noting that he would vote against approval if the proposed look remained the same. “It would be easier for me to bend if it looked more like the village.”
Planning board member Jim Zuehl agreed that renderings provided by the applicant were not in character with the village.
Planning board member Arne Saari asked that he and his colleagues seek clarification from the village attorney as to whether an application could be rejected based only on the fact that it was part of a national franchise.
Traffic congestion, and how this project might make a current problem in the village worse, was on the mind of planning board member Parge Sgro.
“I think that is the main thing we have to look at…all of these other things are secondary,” Sgro said, adding that he would want Elmes to provide a traffic study.
Elme’s wife Fran asked that the first matter on the term “franchise” be settled before they foot the bill for a traffic study that she said is estimated to cost $3,000.
Planning board members also asked questions about the hours of operation, the number of employees during peak and off hours to staff the establishment, the number of parking spaces and when deliveries of donuts and gasoline would be made.
“The historic district review board is responsible for the appearance of the building. They issue the certificate of historical appropriateness,” Chairman Barbaro said near the end of the hearing. “Even though it’s their call, we are still interested in what it looks like.”
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
