Raising Cane’s serves chicken fingers, cole slaw, and Texas toast. The chain is based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has more than more than 600 locations nationwide. There currently are only two locations in Michigan — one in East Lansing and one in Canton.
Sterling Heights Sentry | Published January 21, 2025
By Jim Stickford
STERLING HEIGHTS — On Jan. 8, the Sterling Heights Planning Commission again opted to delay making a decision about a conditional rezoning plan that would allow a new Raising Cane’s fast-food restaurant on Hall Road at the site of a shuttered Chili’s.
Commissioners voted unanimously to delay action in order to give the developer, Sterling Hall LLC, of Royal Oak, time to answer questions from city planners, who, at this point, have recommended that the Planning Commission forward a recommendation of denial to the City Council for a list of reasons including concerns over traffic, parking, the restaurant’s impact on the adjacent office complex, and a potential increase in the number of accidents near the site.
Commissioners stopped short of approving the recommendation for denial, and instead postponed action for a month to allow the petitioner additional time to answer the questions of the planning staff.
The proposed plan calls for the demolition of the closed Chili’s restaurant at 12800 Hall Road, replacing it with Raising Cane’s. The chain is based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has more than 600 locations nationwide. There currently are only two locations in Michigan — one in East Lansing and one in Canton. A plan to bring Raising Cane’s to Chesterfield Township was recently scuttled, according to media reports.
At the meeting in Sterling Heights, planning commissioners listened to a presentation by Assistant City Planner Shawn Keenan, who said officials wanted to know how a fast-food restaurant with a large drive-thru business would affect traffic because of its close proximity to the Sterling Town Center office building.
The 1.16-acre property is in an area zoned as an O-3 high-rise office commercial service district. The proposal calls for a conditional rezoning to a C-3 general business district. The developer last presented its proposal at a November meeting of the Planning Commission. The vote was delayed until the new year to give the developer the chance to address various concerns.
The plan presented Jan. 8 was modified to address issues brought up at the November meeting, but a list of concerns remains.
Keenan said the plan calls for the restaurant to share an internal access road with the office building and that traffic from the restaurant could affect how quickly cars from the office building parking lot could exit to Hall Road.
He said the former Chili’s restaurant was part of the larger Sterling Town Center development and was built to accommodate the office buildings and hotels in the area, hence its O-3 zoning designation. A fast-food restaurant with drive-thru service, on the other hand, would generate more traffic than a sit-down restaurant and would require more short-term parking, which is something the site’s existing O-3 zoning was put in place to curtail.
The revised plan calls for eight stacking spaces in the inner drive-thru lane instead of the required minimum of 10 spaces. The outer drive-thru lane would have nine spaces instead of the required 10. The proposal originally had the required 10 spots, but was changed to accommodate city concerns about traffic flow from the restaurant to Hall Road.
To illustrate his point, Keenan presented the commission with an overhead shot of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Shelby Township. The picture showed many cars around the restaurant, indicating potential ingress and egress problems if the Raising Cane’s were to have the same business.
Planning Commissioner Brandy Wright said she was familiar with that Chick-fil-A location. It had a lot of business when it first opened, but since then, customer traffic has evened out. She also said more than 100,000 vehicles a day use Hall Road. For a car to wait one or two minutes before entering the road doesn’t sound like a long time to her.
Planning Commissioner Gerald Rowe asked when the photo was taken and was told it was taken in 2021. Rowe said this particular Chick-fil-A opened in 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdown, when there was no inside service. All customers were served in their cars at that time, and conditions since then have changed.
“Is there a concern that Sterling Town Center will go out of business because of the introduction of a fast-food restaurant?” said Planning Commissioner Geoffrey Gariepy.
“The concern is this would hurt access and egress to the office parking lot,” said Keenan. “We want to determine the amount of traffic and its impact, which has yet to be determined.”
Attorney Benjamin J. Aloia, speaking on behalf of the developer, said Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane’s have different menus. Cane’s serves chicken fingers, coleslaw, and Texas toast. The average time it takes to fulfill an order is 2 1/2 minutes, meaning cars wouldn’t be backed up the same way they would at a Chick-fil-A, which features a more varied menu.
Keenan said another concern is the proposed drive-thru speaker system, which would “emit no more than 75 decibels 4 feet between the vehicle and the speaker instead of the required maximum limit of 50 decibels between the vehicle and the speaker.”
Aloia said the restaurant’s speaker system uses the latest technology.
“The speaker uses automatic volume control technology,” Aloia said. “The noise won’t travel beyond the lot line, and volume control is based on the ambient noise in the area.”
He also said that no one from the office center has objected to the development plan.
“This is a properly noticed public meeting,” Aloia said. “The planning department is speaking for someone who is not here. That’s kind of interesting.”
He said there have been no letters from the office building owner or tenants. As to traffic from the restaurant slowing down exiting to Hall Road, the office building will be empty for many of the restaurant’s operating hours. People leave starting at 5 p.m., and by 6 p.m., the parking lot is mostly empty. The same applies to weekends.
Planning Commissioner Nathan Inks asked if the land was only being marketed for restaurant use. Property owner Frank Jarbou said that he’s only heard from restaurants. Retailers are hesitant to build there because the location lacks synergy with larger retail locations. A retail business would essentially be all alone in that location, making the property unattractive.
The question of when deliveries would be made to the restaurant was brought up. Aloia said the deliveries would be made before the restaurant opens but couldn’t be more specific because Raising Cane’s is still developing its logistics chain in Michigan.
Gariepy said if there are going to be more changes to the request, the commission really needs to see all of them in writing before voting on sending the proposal to the full City Council.
Planning commissioners unanimously voted to review the plan again at the Feb. 12 meeting.