By Brian Trompeter
Plans for a coffee shop with drive-through lanes in the West Falls Church area received the Fairfax County Planning Commission’s unanimous recommendation to the Board of Supervisors Feb. 7.
Compass Coffee LLC is seeking a special exception from Fairfax County to locate the facility in the former BB&T Bank building at 7393A Lee Highway (Route 29) in the Shops at West Falls Church shopping center.
The proposed cafe site occupies 0.55 acres of the 3.27-acre property. The existing 2,552-square-foot freestanding building has surface parking and three drive-through lanes.
The applicant would keep two of the three existing drive-through lanes, reserving one lane for static orders and equipping it with a menu board and speaker. The other lane would be only for mobile and online orders.
Compass Coffee baristas would use the middle lane for staging and delivery of coffee and other beverages and items in the online-and-mobile-order drive-through lane.
The applicant would make part of the northernmost drive aisle one-way for westbound traffic only. Drivers would be alerted to the one-way configuration by landscaping islands and bollards that would narrow the drive aisle and a “Do Not Enter” sign would warn eastbound drivers. The proposal also calls for conversion of existing parking spaces on this part of the driveway to parallel-parking spaces.
The applicant would install a speaker post and panel-menu board near the seventh stacking space of the drive-through lane. No outdoor seating would be provided and the restaurant would use the existing dumpster enclosure next to the site.
Compass Coffee does not seek an increase in the building’s square footage or height and would provide 27 parking spaces.
The applicant would not add to the site’s impervious surface and would continue to use the shopping center’s extant stormwater-management system, which leads to an underground-detention structure.
There is an existing curb-abutted four-foot-wide sidewalk along the subject shopping center’s Route 29 frontage.
Because the Countywide Trails Plan calls for a sizable paved trail along this side of Route 29, which would replace an existing 4-foot-wide sidewalk, the applicant would contribute $11,587 toward future construction of a 10-foot-wide trail there.
The county’s zoning ordinance requires 11 vehicle-stacking spaces for the site’s drive-through lanes and the applicant would provide 14 spaces by converting the travel aisle to the north of the structure from two-way to one-way.
The site would have one loading space, to be located near the rear of the mobile-order drive-through lane. To avoid conflicts with the drive-through lanes, the applicant would limit loading to hours when the restaurant is closed. County planning staff supports this idea because there are no residences nearby.
About 16 percent of the shopping center’s parking lot is landscaped, which far exceeds the county’s 5-percent requirement for interior parking lots. The applicant has offered to retain healthy vegetation on-site and replace missing or ailing trees and vegetation with native trees and plant species.
Caffeine appears to fuel the Planning Commission. Commission member Mary Cortina (Braddock District) mentioned she recently had visited Compass Coffee’s location in the city of Fairfax.
“Thank you for the coupon where you get a free cup of coffee the first time you come so you’ll come back again,” Cortina said. “It’s a very comfortable place and people looked like they were settling in for the day.”
“Are there any other questions or coffee requests from other commissioners?” asked commission vice chairman Timothy Sargeant (At-Large).
As it turns out, there was one. Planning Commission member Daniel Lagana (Franconia District) complimented Compass Coffee representatives for the company’s espresso-roast coffee, which he regularly buys from the company’s location near his office in Rosslyn.
“I think you sort of have, like, an unfair advantage,” Lagana joked before the commission voted.
“We’re very excited about what lies ahead for us in Fairfax,” said Joel Shetterly, vice president of marketing for Compass Coffee.
