BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week

CANTON – The site plan for the proposed new McDonald’s restaurant on Route 11 next to the Price Chopper store will now move to the village planning board for review.

The county planning board reviewed the plan Dec. 12 and approved it pending some details to be worked out, notably questions of access from Route 11, separation of the restaurant parking lot from the Price Chopper space by a berm, and hitching post areas for the local Amish population.

The architects for the project, Bohler Engineering of Albany, were invited to attend the village planning board meeting Dec. 17 for a conceptual site plan review, said board chairman Barry Walch. However, Walch said Bohler declined to attend in order to focus on the issues raised by the county.

A conceptual review would involve a preliminary look and advisement by the board on the current site plan before conducting the formal site plan review, said Walch.

Walch said the next regular planning board meeting is scheduled for Jan. 7 but the firm has not notified the board they would attend for a formal site plan review at that time.

The new restaurant will take the same modernistic style of many recent McDonald’s overhauls and new franchises being constructed around the country. An architect’s concept art of the new branch for the Golden Arches shows a façade not unlike the newly remodeled Potsdam McDonald’s, except brown in color.

The site plan describes a proposed building of 4,400 square feet standing 22 feet high, with 30 parking places, built on 0.936 acres. The McDonald’s would be located in the southwest corner of the 7.48-acre Price Chopper lot, with Mountain Mart to the west and Monroe Muffler to the east.

Access to the site will be through the existing entry to the Price Chopper lot off Route 11, between Monroe and the proposed lease area for the new restaurant. A second entrance, once inside the lot, will access the McDonald’s lot according to the site plan.

The new restaurant will feature a drive-through, something lacking in the original Canton McDonald’s at 64 Main St. next to the Municipal Building. That restaurant was closed in 2015 by McDonald’s Corporation due to “underperformance” and was one of more than 100 restaurants shuttered for similar reasons that year. Several plans eyeing repurpose for the 64 Main St. site have been floated, including additional government space for the town and village. That lot is still owned by Lettuce Feed You Inc., a McDonald’s Corp. subsidiary.

During peak a.m. hours, the new restaurant at 111 East Main is expected to draw about 200 vehicle trips through the dual-lane drive-through according to the site plan.

The building itself will have more than 87 seats, the site plan indicates.

Plans for a new McDonald’s at 111 East Main St. were first proposed back in late 2014 and the county planning board reviewed a site plan for a restaurant there at that time. However, the project never moved forward.