Drive-thru restaurant slated for Safeway shopping center

The owner of the Safeway-anchored shopping center on Century Drive will start work next week on a drive-thru restaurant that has been part of the plan for the property since 2000.

The 2,600 square-foot restaurant space is being leased by local, experienced restaurant owners, general contractor Rob Kelleher said.

“This is the first of its kind,” he said. “It’s a local group who’s trying a new local concept.”

Kelleher said he and the property owner, Century Park LLC, are subject to nondisclosure agreements, so he declined to discuss the name of the restaurant. A Century Park LLC partner also declined to comment.

The drive-thru, which was approved in February, will likely be the last one permitted in the Central West Side/Century Drive opportunity area that was created when Bend’s new urban growth boundary was adopted last year.

The area, which is south of Simpson Avenue between Mt. Washington Drive and Colorado Avenue, is designated as mixed-use urban, which doesn’t allow drive-thrus, Senior Planner Karen Swirsky said.

Century Park applied for the site plan and variance to setback requirements last fall.

The restaurant will be situated on a 10,000 square-foot site at Century and Simpson, where trees have been cut down in preparation for ground breaking. Kelleher, owner of KellCon commercial construction, said he expects to break ground next week and finish the building sometime in spring.

The drive-thru will run parallel to Century Drive with the restaurant’s main entrances on the south and east sides of the building, according to city planning documents.

Although the drive-thru was part of the Century Park master plan back in 2000, the question of whether traffic on Century Drive could handle a drive-thru came up in discussions about the site plan, Associate Planner Brian Harrington said.

City engineers signed off on the analysis submitted by the developer, which predicts the restaurant will generate an average 592 trips a day with a weekday evening peak of 39 trips, according to city planning documents. Those predictions are based on standard assumptions about all drive-thru restaurants, Harrington said.

The building design is in keeping with the style of the shopping center and doesn’t have much to do with the restaurant concept that’s going inside, Kelleher said. The restaurant will use stone veneer, cedar and metal siding, according to city planning documents. Three “significant” ponderosa pines will be preserved on the site.

—Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com