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1. Flour City says:

   October 3, 2013 at 9:44 am

   I grew up in the sleepy little town of Honeoye Falls and I am for positive development and growth, but I do not see the benefit of a drive through. There are open store fronts within the village that would make for a great stand alone location minus the drive through. Placing a D&D into one of the vacant store fronts for rent is a win win in my eyes. Helps continue the small quiet town feel, but also continues to keep viable businesses within the village.

   Hopefully the town will not sell its soul to D&D and hopefully the person owning the franchise sees the opportunity to place a D&D into one of the local store fronts VS another parking lot with a fast food chain in it.

2. HF-L-ian says:

   October 3, 2013 at 12:23 pm

   I agree with Flour City to a point. I however wish it were some other business than an eatery. For a small town like Honeoye Falls, we’re becoming Henrietta pretty quick, I mean in an almost 1 mile radius there 5 to 6 places to get PIZZA from. There are 4 gas stations 5 restaurants. I would like the village to help support little shops that used to be in town. The little antique shops, specialty shops that TRY to make it in Honeoye Falls. The kind of shops that keep the town quaint and nice.

3. Kevin Zeh says:

   October 3, 2013 at 2:16 pm

   “Dear Honeoye Falls” fails to acknowledge or recognize a key segment of drive-thru use; drivers with one or more very young children, aka, the minivan crowd. I’ll make this simple point. You as a City either foster-to, allow or continue to disallow this customer base; they will act accordingly, and NO, they will not become pedestrians or bicyclists any time soon.

4. RochesterSubway.com says:

   October 3, 2013 at 2:26 pm

   If the “minivan” segment of the population is already being very well served everywhere else, which they are, then Honeoye Falls may do better by distinguishing itself from the rest of the drive-thru towns. Zig while everyone else zags.

5. HFL resident says:

   October 3, 2013 at 3:57 pm

   Respectfully I ask, if I understand what you are saying, our main street is not equipt to take on heavy traffic; and a Dunkin Donuts would actually put current shops out of business? Then tell me why construction vehicles/trucks and 18 wheelers drive straight through town on a daily basis; and look at one of your own pictures of the beautiful, EMPTY, brick building on the corner of Main Street. If our streets can handle construction vehicles, I think they could handle a few extra cars who come through town for a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. Businesses are already closing their doors, left and right, because no one comes here to shop except the locals. All of our cute specialty shops have closed and the space is now empty or filled with architect, real estate and Ophthalmology businesses – which is good, but how much business do they bring to the community? The Mom and Pops (the video store, organic coffee shop, book store, etc.) can’t sustain their businesses. I know for a fact that some of the existing local businesses are quite fine with a Donkin Donuts; it’s called progress. The restructuring of the “code” might be worded to say exactly where the “drive-thrus” can and cannot be and how many of them should be here. I believe that would be the best solution. The area of the HFMP is already commercialized and there is undeveloped land right across the street. That is a perfect place for a few, small chain businesses which would also bring in more business to the community from individuals driving through town as well as the locals. I’m all for it – to a certain extent. I welcome Dunkin Donuts, but I would still frequent Enjoy – they have the BEST scones!!

6. DJ says:

   October 3, 2013 at 4:44 pm

   Dunkin Donuts would not ‘bring business’ to the community. The only $ that stays in the community is the minimum wage the high school kids are earning.

   It’s unfortunate that factories have left, but D&D will not bring tourists, it’ll just serve those who are already there.

   And if ‘Progress’ is Fast Food chains then count me out. FF chains steal the $ and character from a small town. I think a good compromise would be to offer them their choice of the existing empty store fronts.

   @HFL Resident. I’d actually respect your stance if you just said ‘I want a D&D because the coffee & scones are good’. Because that’s all you’re getting. The notion of any economic benefit to the town is a falacy.

7. Rob Maurer says:

   October 3, 2013 at 7:14 pm

   HF Resident,

   By ‘traffic’ I meant we are not equipped for a vast increase in the QUANTITY of vehicles. (Not the size. Sorry for the confusion.) We should be careful when we make development choices that will lead to more automobiles and automobile dependence. Our streets are currently designed to allow for the passage of traffic at a low speed, giving preference to pedestrians, bicyclists, etc. Drive-thrus are at odds with that.

   As a resident, you also must know the “EMPTY, brick building” picture which used to have the video store is no longer empty. It is now a massage therapy business, and a yoga studio is opening up next to it in a month.

   Also is anyone really surprised the video store closed? Or even the book store? Those are more the result of changes in product technology than anything else. e.g. Blockbusters and Borders have closed too after-all. Certainly allowing drive-thrus was not going to save them.

   “Businesses are already closing their doors, left and right” is a gross exaggeration. Most of the store fronts are occupied, and many serve regular foot traffic. Let’s review: Within one block of the center are several restaurants (Salvatore’s, The Brewery, Cosmo’s, Four Seasons Chinese, Critic’s), the barber shop, the salon, the dry cleaners, the flooring store and yes, the ophthalmologist & eyeglass store (where I just walked from before writing this). There is also the post office, the library, both the town & village offices, several specialized doctors’ offices, in addition to the insurance, investment, architecture, real-estate and law firms. There have been a handful of vacancies on Main Street the entire time I have lived here, but at the moment there are relatively few vacancies, and no more on Main Street than there were when I moved here.

   I fail to see how allowing drive-thru restaurants in any part of the village ensures the vacancies we do have will be filled or provides more business. Drive-thrus may help ensure businesses looking to come to the village will not consider our existing stock of vacancies because it was not built for drive-thrus. They will build away from the heart of the village and to some degree take customers away from existing restaurants. If there is sufficient demand for a new restaurant or business, then they should be able to survive without the drive-thru. If they require that competitive advantage, then clearly the market is not here and we should avoid adding another vacancy.

   The “progress” you speak of killed “Main Street” in many towns across the country and locally. We are the exception… We still have one! Clearly that kind of planning has failed and we must learn from their mistakes & try to protect our very much alive Main Street.

   Thanks for commenting!

   – Rob Maurer

8. Peter says:

   October 4, 2013 at 7:44 am

   Here’s a compromise: put the DD in the gas station. Those gas station/fast food combos kill two birds with one stone.

9. Aaron says:

   October 4, 2013 at 1:00 pm

   NOOOOO!!!! Living there, I loved the fact that it was a village… not a town, not henrietta, but a nice village, with a nice 4 corners “downtown”. I remember when it was just a flashing red light! “Progress” should not be measured by how many corporations there are. Will the new DD be 24 hours? Cuz that would just ruin the whole “sleepy” village feeling that is the enduring charm of the whole place.

10. Rob Maurer says:

    October 4, 2013 at 1:42 pm

    I have heard that DD does want it to be open 24 hours. If allowed, they’d be the only 24 hour business in the village.

    – Rob Maurer

11. Peter says:

    October 5, 2013 at 8:55 am

    I can’t figure out why Dunkin’ would want it to be 24 hours. I can’t imagine there’d be much business going on at night. The DD next to my office on Scottsville Rd closes at 9 pm, and that’s near the airport and various other overnight work spots.

12. gz says:

    October 5, 2013 at 9:15 am

    This is rochestersubway.com, not i-am-a-concerned-suburbanite-who-is-worried-about-a-developer-in-my-backyard.com.

13. Laura Halleran says:

    October 5, 2013 at 4:00 pm

    Short and sweet…I moved here to get away from “that stuff.”

14. Matthew Denker says:

    October 5, 2013 at 7:09 pm

    Scathing! Sorry I haven’t been around lately. Dunkin donuts is fine, in its way. My understanding is that they are franchised, so in fact, much of the money does stay in the community. That said, honeoye is one of those spectacular small towns that could be reasonably densified, connected to a regional network of transportation options, and turned into a real option for people, even if they are car light.

    Ignoring that fantasy, I am intrigued by the idea of “being Henrietta” put forth in comments. This suggests Henrietta is something. It’s not. It has no real borders. It has no sense of place. There is no there there. It’s a mall with some single family houses appended to the edges of its massive parking lots. It is a smear on the landscape at best. It exists solely to collect the labors of locals and ship them elsewhere. The people of Minneapolis MN thank you for a beautiful baseball stadium.

    Oh, getting back to HF. Drive throughs should not be allowed. I don’t know enough about zoning in the town, but I hope that street facing parking lots are also disallowed. Hopefully that’s not also part of this plan, because using an alley as a drive through would actually not be nearly as bad as a parking lot breaking the street wall.

15. Howard Decker says:

    October 7, 2013 at 8:24 pm

    Isn’t it always and forever about cars? We have sold our souls to the Devil, and now he is exacting his price.

    Whether town or city, hamlet or village, and in the name of convenience, we can invent all kinds of seemingly rational reasons – our tykes, our canes (and here I know whereof I speak), our weather, our poverty – to justify the irrational.

    There is no upside to wrecking a place for the sake of cars. It is all damage, and mostly irreparable.

    When will we learn? I suspect we won’t.

16. Rob Maurer says:

    October 9, 2013 at 7:33 pm

    It would appear the person who told me DD was interested in being open 24 hrs was speculating.

    The proposed code change has been publicly published today and specifies the hours will be restricted to 5 AM through 11 PM. Please see the proposed code change here:

    http://www.villageofhoneoyefalls.org/Misc_PDF_files/Drive_Thru_Code.pdf

    – Rob Maurer

17. Daggar says:

    October 11, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    The minivan crowd already moved to the suburbs. A lot of them ARE becoming pedestrians and bicyclists precisely because they don’t like living in the middle of soulless suburban sprawl.

    Those who insist on their drive-thru’s can stay in Henrietta.

18. M says:

    October 21, 2013 at 7:28 pm

    No offense, but I bet a lot of people who don’t want the Dunkin’ Donuts in Honeoye Falls have no problem using drive thru windows in Pittsford and Henrietta. It’s fine as long as they’re in someone else’s back yard, right?

    Also, having grown up outside of the village of Honeoye Falls, I can’t say that I recall a very large percentage of the population getting around on foot or by bike on a regular basis. I think there’s a lot of looking through rose-colored glasses going on here.

19. Rob Maurer says:

    October 26, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    For the record, immediately after the Public Hearing portion of the meeting Monday night, the village board voted and passed the code change to allow drive-thrus in the General Commercial District. ( Full text of the code change here: http://www.villageofhoneoyefalls.org/Misc_PDF_files/Drive_Thru_Code.pdf ).

    The vote was 4 to 1, with Trustee Stottler ‘opposed’, the rest ‘for’.

20. Tina says:

    February 13, 2014 at 12:52 am

    Hi Ron,

    Just came across this while researching for a current design project for Honeoye Falls! I’m a final year Interior Design student at RIT and for one of our class projects we are helping to create and design concepts for some of the empty storefronts in your town. Here’s a link to our projects Facebook page. We are all very excited to present to the Chamber in May!

    https://www.facebook.com/RITEnvisionHFNY

    Cheers!

21. john says:

    January 18, 2015 at 8:15 pm

    ASAP… Those that are concerned about dunkin need to act quick to tear down those crack houses one on Monroe st outskirts.. The other by rt 15a at stop light…thseseyesores are seen by everyone driving into HF…her real…worrying about a donut shop??

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