Despite Vocal Neighborhood Outcry, Cleveland Landmarks Commission Approves Planned Starbucks Drive-Thru in Ohio City

A rendering of what the building at 2061 Gehring Avenue in Ohio City might look like after its remodeled later this year, to welcome a Starbucks with a drive-thru—which many neighbors feel is against the purpose of the pedestrian friendliness of the district. Credit: LDA Architects

For roughly the half century that the building at 2061 Gehring Avenue has been around, it’s been tied to cars. In the 1970s, it was a showroom and dealership for the DeSoto wing of Chrysler. Decades later, it hosted a lot for mechanics and manufacturers.

And that legacy is likely to continue: 2061 Gehring is set to host a new Starbucks with a drive-thru to wrap around it, much to the chagrin of the residents and business owners of the historic neighborhood.

One of the first steps toward breaking ground happened Thursday morning when the Cleveland Landmarks Commission granted a construction permit on a 7-2 vote for the Starbucks and three other retail spaces in the project.

The approval came despite strong public opposition: 42 people sent emails to the commission opposing the Starbucks drive-thru.

“We’ve heard from the residents, the business owners, everyone that has come through our office, or sent notes, who say they’re opposed to the drive-thru,” Donna Gregonis, director of economic development at Tremont West Development Corporation, told the CLC on Thursday. “This is something that people really value—the walkability of this part of the neighborhood.”

“This use simply does not belong in this dense, people-centered area,” she added.

Even Cleveland Planning Commission Director Calley Mersmann, one of the CLC members who voted no, put forth the same philosophy.

The “drive-thru is not really in context with the rest of the historic district,” she said, “And, in fact, it’s in opposition to its pedestrian nature.”

The site of Ohio City’s future Starbucks, 2061 Gehring Ave., which has also been the source of frustration for neighbors who don’t want to see a national chain with a drive-thru placed there. Credit: Mark Oprea

Ohio City’s Market District today has a lot more credibility as a walkable place to be than a decade ago, and the neighborhood has long been proud that retail spaces are filled with locally owned shops. (News that Chipotle will soon arrive on West 25th was met with similar disgust.)

Which doesn’t seem to matter to Starbucks. What used to be that plush café where generic jazz played and lattes-in-clean-ceramic were sipped has shifted vastly to a get-and-go type of coffee shop model. Seventy percent of Starbucks’ 9,500 stores across the country are mobile or drive-thru formats, CNN found last year.

That’s reasonable from a Wall Street lens. Fewer barista hours are needed; orders go up. At least that’s how Starbucks CFO Rachel Ruggeri framed the strategy of the company’s wave of 2,000 new stores at a consumer conference last June.

“That’s going to be different versions of drive-thru stores, delivery-only stores as well as different versions of pickup stores,” she said. “There are lots of different store designs and types to be able to meet the increasing demand that we see.”

As we’ll see soon at 2061 Gehring.

Although CLC approved LDA Architects’ designs for the remodel, the board suggested that the plans will head to City Hall’s traffic engineers, so that they can figure out if any curb cuts or traffic signs need to be installed to handle the influx of cars in an already busy section of Ohio City filled with pedestrians and bicyclists.

“That engineering is really critical to make sure that we’re all working together to make it as safe as possible,” CLC Chair Julie Trott said.

In plans submitted to the CLC, Starbucks is planning to have outdoor seating, which gave Trott pause. She thought of other Starbucks, those in suburban areas, those surrounded by a sea of parking.

And, she noted, empty patios. “It’s not safe for people crisscrossing from their cars,” she said. “So nobody goes in!”

Tom Gillespie, the property owner, and Steve Jennings, an architect for LDA who led the presentation to the CLC on Thursday, urged the board to approve the plans, as they were already “behind schedule,” Gillespie said.

He gave the board a kind of ultimatum: it’s either we go along with what Starbucks wants, or 2061 Gehring remains vacant and untouched until another tenant tries again.

“One of the issues here is the drive-thru is crucial,” Gillespie told the board. “And without this tenant? Without the tenant, everything falls apart. Tax credits fall apart. Financing falls apart.”

After the meeting, Gillespie said the drive-thru is absolutely necessary.

“They won’t do it without it,” he said.