Aldermen reject drive-through coffee at Brentwood Plaza amid traffic and safety concerns

Brentwood — The Brentwood Board of Aldermen voted 4-4 on Aug. 18, 2025, and failed to approve an amended site-development plan and conditional use permit for Brew Crew LLC to operate a drive-through coffee shop at the Brentwood Plaza, 8828 Manchester Road. The vote followed an extended discussion about traffic counts, queuing and internal circulation inside the shopping center.

The vote was split: Aldermen Goad, Sims, Lochmiller and Harder voted yes; Aldermen Plovka, Tice, Gould and Erger voted no, producing a tie that defeated the measure. The proposal was introduced as bill 65-63.

The dispute centered on whether the coffee shop’s drive-through queue would worsen backups at nearby intersections and create pedestrian-safety risks inside the Schnucks-anchored shopping center. Sean (consultant) told aldermen that counts for the traffic study were collected in July and that the study estimated "the amount of new trips that are expected to be out in the morning is only 26 trips" while noting an additional roughly 70 pass-by trips. "If all of our new trips went through that intersection... it's 26 in and out," Sean said, adding that an intersection that…