McKinney councilors signal support for 200-foot drive-through buffer, ask staff to draft code change with 150-foot minimum across roads

At a City Council work session in McKinney, staff outlined proposed zoning changes for restaurants with drive-throughs and council members signaled consensus to ask staff to draft a Unified Development Code (UDC) text amendment establishing a 200-foot buffer from single-family residential uses, with a 150-foot minimum when a roadway separates the uses.

The UDC amendment under consideration would restrict where restaurants with drive-through speaker boxes may be sited relative to single-family residences or zones and would preserve an option for applicants to seek a specific use permit (SUP) to waive the buffer. Council discussion focused on balancing residential protections, impacts on existing businesses and the noticing requirements for properties that would become legally nonconforming under a code change.

City staff said the city currently has 163 drive-through facilities across multiple zoning districts. Staff presented four options ranging from no change to a “nuclear option” that would require an SUP for any drive-through in the C-2 zoning district. Under the staff analysis, adopting a straight 200-foot buffer would render 15 existing drive-throughs legal nonconformities; tightening the buffer to ignore only arterial road separations would raise the nonconforming count to about 19; and the most restrictive option (requiring SUPs in C-2) would affect about 31 sites. “If a drive-through restaurant wanted to come in…and it was within 200 feet of a residential use or zone, it would only be permitted if it was not within 200 feet,” city staff member Jennifer said during the presentation.

Council members asked technical questions about how the buffer would be measured and how different housing types would be classified. Staff said the measurement is taken from the restaurant building to the residential property line, not structure-to-structure, and that townhomes are treated as single-family residential for this purpose while multifamily apartment developments are not. Staff also noted the code typically exempts a use buffer when a public street separates the uses; one option under discussion would make that exemption apply only when an arterial roadway separates the uses.

Several council members pressed for a numeric minimum distance even when a street separates uses. “For me, I would like to see some sort of a standard set, even if it is across a right of way,” a councilmember said. After discussion of examples in McKinney (including locations at Ridge and El Dorado, Highway 5, Lake Forest and Taylor Burke) and review of sister-city standards such as Frisco and Prosper, council members converged on a working consensus: adopt a 200-foot base buffer with a 150-foot minimum when separation is across a roadway. That working direction was stated in the session but was not a formal ordinance vote.

Staff emphasized procedural steps and state notice requirements. A UDC text amendment would require Planning & Zoning notice, a City Council hearing and mailed notice to property and business owners whose sites would become legally nonconforming, per recent state-law changes. Staff recommended against a phased “effective date” approach because staggered dates increase administrative complexity; instead, staff advised applying the change prospectively and providing notice to affected property owners so they can pursue rezoning or SUPs if desired.

Staff also reiterated that an SUP remains an off-ramp for applicants who cannot meet the buffer. Cameron Christie, City of McKinney staff, noted that some existing restaurants on El Dorado — Whataburger, Chick-fil-A and Taco Bell — already have SUPs under current planned-development (PD) zoning and therefore would not require new SUP approvals if a code change were adopted.

Council direction at the end of the discussion was to ask staff to return with draft code language implementing the 200-foot buffer and the 150-foot minimum across rights of way, to scrub the city’s dataset so required mailed notices are not missed, and to present the proposal for formal public hearings. Staff said they would follow up with the requested draft and data checks. The council did not take a formal vote to adopt the change during the session.