Brookfield Gives Green Light to Downtown Drive-Thru's

BROOKFIELD — The Zoning Commission passed new regulations last week that allow downtown developers to apply for a special permit if they want to include a drive-thru at their establishment.

The initiative was prompted by the needs of the owner of local Dunkin franchises, who wanted to move one of his coffee shops down Federal Road into the property where the Hearth Restaurant used to be, the News Times has reported.

Existing drive-thru's in the area have been grandfathered in to the new arrangement, but some resdidents had expressed concern that any additional drive-thru would run counter to the town's efforts to make downtown more pedestrian-friendly.

Proponents of the newly-passed legislation -- which requires drive-thrus to sit on a 40,000-square-foot lot at minimum and have have frontage on a state highway and be south of the intersection of Federal Roa and Route 25 -- believe it will attract developers and be a boon to the downtwn revitalization.