Worth the hype? Raising Cane’s drive-thru to move forward in Meridian after an appeal
Popular fast-food joint Raising Cane’s is indeed coming to Meridian, the City Council affirmed.
The council voted 4-2 to uphold a Planning and Zoning Commission decision in September that Raising Cane’s can build its drive-thru on Eagle Road, after an appeal from a neighboring business owner. Questions remain about what would happen if the restaurant’s “raging fans” begin lining up — or disrupting traffic.
The Louisiana-based chicken chain announced in April that it had settled on a spot in fast-growing Meridian for its expansion into Idaho, the Statesman previously reported. Plans filed with the city show a 2,900-square-foot restaurant with two drive-thru lanes.
Mayor Robert Simison and the City Council heard Raising Cane’s case for its drive-thru permit on Nov. 6, following concerns that cars lining up could cause traffic problems for neighbors and nearby businesses.
“There’s nowhere for the cars to stack,” Perry Coles, owner of a jewelry store south of the planned restaurant, told the council.
Coles worries that cars will back up onto a 25-foot wide access road, which serves several businesses and almost 700 apartment units, the Statesman previously reported.
To Cane’s east is a coming 120-room Wyndham Hotel; east and southeast of that are apartments; and north is a large shopping center. West, of course, is Eagle Road, a major arterial used for almost 60,000 vehicle trips per year, according to an August post by Simison.
Raising Cane’s spokespersons RV Vann and Michael O’Reilly told the council that their planned drive-thru has room for 45 cars to queue in two lanes. With average order times, O’Reilly said the restaurant can handle up to 360 orders per hour with its current queuing plan, exceeding Raising Cane’s expected hourly peak demand of 115 trips.
“We’ve kind of got it down to a science,” Vann said, noting the restaurant’s short menu — just chicken fingers and fries. “As people start pulling in, we start cooking chicken,” he said. “They call it dropping bird.”
Vann and O’Reilly also said the restaurant would happily employ off-duty cops to help direct traffic, although with demands on the Police Department, it’s more likely the restaurant will have to contract with one of the several private security agencies in the Valley.
“We want to be a good neighbor,” Vann said.
The council deliberated on possible mitigations. Among those discussed were changing the orientation of the drive-thru on the site or temporarily reserving additional space for stacking offsite within the broader subdivision. Simison pointed out that another tenant will go in directly south of the restaurant, which could complicate traffic flow.
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Council Member Liz Strader said that some proposed solutions — including widening the adjacent access road — were not within the restaurant’s control, nor the council’s purview in reviewing the drive-thru permit.
“We have a very narrow legal scope,” Strader told her colleagues and the public.
Strader ultimately made a motion to approve the permit with the condition that Raising Cane’s must work with city staff and the police to create a traffic mitigation plan for high-traffic times like the grand opening and that the restaurant’s customers may not idle on public roadways. The council adopted the motion.
In an email to the Statesman, Strader clarified that the city’s “number one concern was ... idling along Eagle Road,” but also that “if there is a public safety hazard” on the privately owned access road, the police could be called in. Bill Nary, the city attorney, confirmed via phone that if stacking was continuously affecting the surrounding private or public roads with no mitigation efforts on behalf of the restaurant, Cane’s could come back before the council.
Council Member John Overton, who opposed the motion along with Council President Luke Cavener, told the Statesman, “We will have to see how things shake out” in terms of traffic impacts, noting he is still concerned.
Coles told the Statesman via text message that he was “surprised” by the decision and that he thinks traffic will be “a big problem.”
Meanwhile, Caniacs are gearing up, and the project is onto building permitting next, Bill Parsons, planning supervisor in the city’s planning division, told the Statesman.
How the city should handle high-traffic drive-thrus remains an open question for the City Council and planners, who are still exploring the possibility of updating city code, but not one that was answered in time for the Raising Cane’s. Overton told the Statesman they’ll be hearing more cases like this one, including another Meridian In-N-Out planned for Ten Mile Road.
