GLENMONT — The McDonald’s location at Glenmont Plaza on 376 Feura Bush Road may receive an order of a makeover soon, something the Bethlehem Planning Board has been considering looking further into since its March 5 meeting.
This 2,932-square-foot fast-food restaurant is looking to receive a renovated facade, an aesthetic overhaul of its menu boards, patio improvements, three new building signage and more ADA-compliant parking spaces, walkways and seating layout. Blueprints and artistic renderings were provided by Bohler Engineering and architects Hoffman & Riley, both based in Albany.
According to submitted town documents, the refurbished building would have an overall grey theme and appear more right-angled to exude a modern look. Planning Board Chairman John Smolinsky had said that he would like it to visually complement the other nearby existing buildings and he requested Owen Speulstra — the visiting Bohler Engineering civil design engineer — to return for a future meeting with more artistic simulations to show whether the new McDonald’s color scheme would aesthetically fit with the rest of Glenmont Plaza and even the residential homes across the street.
“Maybe you could try to consider the nearby residential buildings and the neighborhood character too in your designs, to the extent you can with McDonald’s,” Planning Board member Kate Powers said. “If you drive around to different places in the world, McDonald’s looks differently as you know, depending on the community so I think it would be helpful if you can try to match that to some extent.”
The current analog plastic menu boards would be replaced with new digital LED ones; ADA-compliant accessible walkways would better connect the building to the parking spaces and street sidewalk along Feura Bush Road; and there would be more adequate lighting for said walkways. The existing parking spaces would be slightly remade as Speulstra noted that they are “too steep where they are and there’s also a drainage structure in the middle of it which is a kind of a trip hazard.” He also said that the building’s outdoor patio and seating will be removed and reinstalled with better ADA-compliant ones in terms of remedying the current slope and lack of sufficient ADA-accessible seats.
Speulstra said the drive-thru’s outdoor speaking signs would emit about 65 decibels within four feet which is around how loud normal conversation is like — this ideally would not cause noise pollution to surrounding buildings and homes.
The Planning Board has tabled the application for now.