# County reviewers put the proposed Raising Cane’s on Erie Boulevard inside a no-build line that is not on the plans

**By Frank Mahoney, CNY Signal**

The Onondaga County Planning Board voted August 5 to recommend modifications to the site plan for a Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers restaurant at 3159 Erie Boulevard East in DeWitt. The interesting part of the file is not the chicken. It is two lines in the county’s staff review that never became conditions.

The first is a boundary. According to the county’s review of case Z-26-191, a Land Title Survey dated 7/29/25 shows an area in the northwestern portion of the property labeled “Limits of Buildable Area per exhibit No. 6 in the Declaration of Easements, Covenants and Restrictions.” County staff wrote that this area coincides with the location of the proposed restaurant building, and added a five word finding: “This is not shown in the site development plans.”

A declaration of easements, covenants and restrictions is a private recorded agreement, typically among the owners and tenants of a shopping plaza. It binds the land regardless of what a zoning board decides. The county’s own record says the building is drawn on top of one of its lines, and that the line does not appear on the drawings the town is being asked to approve.

The second is a sidewalk that does not exist. Under the heading Bike/Ped/Transit, the county wrote that a roadside sidewalk runs along the Erie Boulevard East frontage, that “there are no sidewalks connecting the building to roadside sidewalks,” and that per Centro, Erie Boulevard East has public transit service with bus stops “located adjacent to the site.”

Neither observation became a required change.

### What the county actually required

The board’s resolution lists exactly two modifications, and both come from the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection. The first requires that a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan for a project inside a county drainage district be submitted to the department for review, with any resulting mitigation reflected on the plans before or as a condition of municipal approval. The second requires the town to ensure no permanent structures encroach into the county sanitary sewer easement, and requires county-owned infrastructure to be shown on the plans.

The sidewalk appears one paragraph later, in softer language. The applicant and town “are encouraged” to add sidewalks connecting the building to existing sidewalks on Erie Boulevard, along with bicycle racks, and to add planting islands in the parking lot to improve aesthetics and aid in stormwater management “on the highly paved site.”

That is the distinction worth holding onto. A modification carries legal weight. Under General Municipal Law section 239-m, a referring municipal board “shall not act contrary to such recommendation except by a vote of a majority plus one of all the members thereof,” and must set forth its reasons. An encouragement carries none.

### The project

Raising Cane’s Restaurant, LLC proposes to demolish the existing Taco Bell and build a 3,380 square foot restaurant with a two-lane drive-thru on the 1.54 acre parcel, tax map 044.-07-14.1, in a Business zoning district. Per the Site Keynote Plan dated 7/21/26, the building sits along the Erie Boulevard frontage with the drive-thru circulating around three sides, a 36 space parking lot along the side, and a 550 square foot patio at the front.

The building has already shrunk. When the same project went to the county in June as a variance referral, the county described a 3,472 square foot restaurant with a 573 square foot patio. The August file describes 3,380 square feet and 550 square feet.

Access does not change. Per the site plan, there is no direct access to Erie Boulevard East, which is state Route 5, and all access runs through the existing plaza. The county attached an advisory note: per the New York State Department of Transportation, all access to Erie Boulevard East “must remain coming via existing plaza driveways.”

The stormwater file is thick. Per the Environmental Assessment Form dated 3/3/26, 1.25 acres will be disturbed and the site will “connect to the existing plaza system.” A SWPPP prepared by Bohler Engineering and dated 7/21/26 came in with the referral. The site sits in an Onondaga County Drainage District for Bear Trap and Ley Creek. A 15 foot wide drainage easement crosses the drive-thru and part of the parking lot from the north. A 20 foot sewer easement and a 15 foot drainage easement sit off site in the plaza and terminate at the northeastern property line.

The county also flagged that the site is within 2,000 feet of a property in the state Environmental Site Remediation database, and that the parcel may contain northern long-eared bat habitat, while noting aerial imagery shows no wooded areas on the site.

### The parking math, and who it leaves out

The pedestrian gap matters more than it might because of what the town already approved.

On June 15, the DeWitt Zoning Board of Appeals granted five area variances for the project, according to the board’s minutes. Among them: a reduction of 32 parking spaces, allowing 36 where town code section 192-103(D) requires a minimum of 68. That is roughly 53 percent of the code requirement. The board also allowed four stacking spaces per drive-thru lane where code section 192-104(A) requires six.

An engineer for the applicant told that board the company has over 900 locations and used data from them to size the lot, that there is room to add more parking but the applicant would rather keep green space, and that average drive-thru time is about two and a half minutes. The board’s written finding on the parking reduction was that the benefit could not be achieved another way because the applicant is “maintaining green space.”

So the approved plan is a restaurant with half the code parking, a drive-thru wrapping three sides, bus stops at the curb, and no walkway from the curb to the door. The county noticed this in June, when its delegated review of the variance encouraged sidewalks and bike racks. It noticed again in August. Both times the note was advice.

### The sign fight, and a number that does not reconcile

The zoning board did push back on one thing. The applicant asked for five additional attached signs; the board approved four, declining the sign facing into the plaza. A member said he would prefer not to set a precedent for signs above the eaves. That motion passed 6 to 0.

A second motion, allowing two attached signs two feet above the roof eave where code requires one foot below it, passed 5 to 1, the only split vote of the night on this application.

The minutes also contain a figure that does not line up. In the discussion, the minutes state that after the plaza-facing sign was dropped, the aggregate sign area variance “would need to be recalculated to an area variance of 44.71 sq ft for a total signage area of 164.71 sq ft.” The motion the board then passed approved a variance of 34.71 square feet for a total signage area of 154.71 square feet. Both figures appear in the same document, ten square feet apart. The approved motion is the operative one.

### Where it stands

Approval by the county is not approval by the town, and approval by the town is not an opening date.

The county received the site plan referral on 7/24/2026 and acted on 8/5/2026, inside its 30 day window, which the file lists as expiring 8/23/2026. That deadline governs the county, not the town.

As of publication, the project has not returned to the DeWitt Planning Board. It does not appear on the agenda or in the 346 page agenda packet for the board’s August 13 meeting, and it does not appear on any DeWitt Planning Board agenda published since June 11, when the board issued its recommendation to the zoning board under town file PB-854-26. The next Planning Board meetings on the town calendar are August 27 and September 10.

One more small thing sits in the county’s June file on this project. Under Advisory Notes, where the county lists statutory warnings, the published document contains the line “Other Text Goes here.” It is a template placeholder that was never filled in or removed.

### Sources

– Onondaga County Planning Board, draft meeting minutes, August 5, 2026, case Z-26-191 resolution and staff review: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/08/Draft-Minutes-08-05-26.pdf
– Onondaga County Planning Board, meeting minutes, June 24, 2026, case Z-26-146 delegated administrative review memo: https://onondaga.gov/planning/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2026/07/Minutes-06-24-26-1.pdf
– Onondaga County Planning Board 2026 agendas and minutes index: https://onondaga.gov/planning/ocpb/ocpb_agendas_minutes/2026-meetings-minutes/
– Town of DeWitt Planning Board, August 13, 2026 meeting, agenda and 346 page agenda packet: https://dewittny.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1319/files
– Town of DeWitt Planning Board, June 11, 2026 agenda (item 3, PB-854-26): https://dewittny.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1317/files
– Town of DeWitt Zoning Board of Appeals, June 15, 2026 meeting agenda and minutes: https://dewittny.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1377/files
– New York General Municipal Law section 239-m: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GMU/239-M