GREENFIELD — Some residents are not too friendly to the idea of a Starbucks setting up shop in Franklin County.

At its meeting on Thursday, the Planning Board delayed its decision on whether to approve a site plan for the national coffeehouse chain to set up shop with a 14-vehicle drive-thru at the current Friendly’s restaurant site, located at 200 Mohawk Trail near the Interstate 91 rotary. The board’s decision to delay the vote came after residents voiced their concerns that the new business will create traffic congestion in the area — predicting that its proximity to the interstate will attract out-of-town drivers to the area.

“I think this is a lunatic idea,” resident Steven Finer said at the meeting. “All this is based upon issues about the quality of life of the people who live here. And I’m, I think extremely concerned about what it will be when people who are already disgruntled are trying to navigate going on the road to travel west will have to deal with other travelers who are in a hurry to get somewhere. It just feels to me like the congestion is going to be frightening.”

Prior to public comment on the site plan, Kimley-Horn and Associates Transportation Engineer Bill Scully presented a traffic study to the board, which found that the approximately 4,306-square-foot re-development is expected to generate a total of 2,300 vehicle trips to the Starbucks per day — an increase of 143 more vehicles than Friendly’s attracts during “peak morning hours” on weekdays, and 176 more vehicle trips on Saturday evenings at peak time.

Planning Board Chair George Touloumtzis said that since developers only sent the traffic statement Thursday morning — the same day as the Planning Board meeting — he was uneasy voting on the site plan without the chance to further review it. Other members, such as Vice Chair Charles “Chuck” Kinney, expressed concerns that the parking statement failed to consider the “holistic” traffic impact expected when Starbucks traffic combines with the traffic generated by other businesses in the area.

“I would like to see a traffic study that incorporates McDonald’s, the Aldi, as well as Starbucks, because they’re all going to be coming together at the same time. That is going to be, as I see it, the negative,” Kinney said. ” I think it’s going to be very, very busy just because of [Starbucks’] popularity, along with a very popular McDonald’s and Aldi, that intersection is going to have a great (negative) impact to the drivers coming down Mohawk Trail or coming out of Robbins Road.”

Speaking during the public comment period, resident Al Norman echoed Kinney’s concerns and urged the board to vote to decrease the threshold of estimated vehicle trips necessary for a project to be considered a “major development” that requires a comprehensive impact study — from more than 3,000 trips to more than 2,000 trips.

In 1991, Greenfield passed a Major Development Review ordinance requiring all developments expected to bring in more than 500 daily vehicle trips to submit impact studies. In 2016, the threshold was raised to 1,000 vehicle trips, and in 2019, the number of vehicles was again raised to 3,000 with a “vote swap,” in City Council, exchanging a more lenient Major Development Review ordinance for a vote to approve borrowing to construct a new library.

“The way we look at studies and look, it is seriously flawed because commonsense tells you that traffic is like a layer cake — if you start off, let’s say, with a Big Y with a Staples on one side and then you add an Aldi on the other side, and then you add Starbucks ... you’re laying layer after layer of traffic volume,” Norman said.

After voting to delay review of the Starbucks site plan until its next meeting in April, the Planning Board voted unanimously to make a positive recommendation to City Council in favor of reducing the number of daily vehicle trips required for an Major Development Review study from 3,000 to 2,000.

“At that time it was good politics but bad planning,” Touloumtzis said of the 2019 vote swap.

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.