Fast Food License Denied

Community members voiced opposition to granting a license to a local McDonald’s in order to extend its hours to 2 a.m. at last night’s Allston Civic Association meeting.

Allston residents at the meeting said they worried that granting the restaurant later hours might disturb the largely residential neighborhood by attracting students and others out late at night.

The conditional license would require the fast food restaurant—located in the Brighton Mills Shopping Center—to renew the agreement every year. The change was presented as temporary, but residents said they thought that what was marketed as a temporary policy might easily become a permanent one.

“They put it on temporarily but then they never take it off,” Task Force member Rita DiGesse said. “I’m dead set against late hours because it’s a neighborhood—you are close to homes all along Western Ave.”

Bob King, the owner of the McDonald’s, said he has had good experiences with late-night establishments. King operates fourteen stores throughout the Boston area, two of which run 24-hours a day. King asked ACA members to extend the store’s hours from midnight to 2 a.m and said that he thought that the change in hours would ultimately have a minimal impact.

“I really do believe we will be a good neighbor,” King said. “We proved our way, we went for a late closing and had no major issues and the stores worked very well.”

King said the main reason he wanted to extend hours was to regain losses that the relocation of The Charlesview Apartments—a low-income housing unit—would cause. The new housing complex, slated to begin construction in upcoming months, will be located a few blocks down Western Avenue on land that is currently occupied by several vacant buildings in the Brighton Mills Shopping Center.

As a result, King explained, he wanted to discuss the issue with the future residents of the new apartments, none of which were present at last night’s meeting.

In a preliminary vote, six members voted for the extension and seven opposed.

Allston Task Force member Brent Whelan ’73 said that extending the McDonald’s hours could result in negative consequences for the neighborhood, such as encouraging other outlets in the area to become late-night establishments.

President of the ACA Paul Berkeley, who opposed the later hours, said that the probability of Allston residents actually using the late-hour operations is low.

“There are largely commercial areas that have a large night-population,” Berkeley said. “But Western Ave. is somewhat of a different population.”

Harvard’s Director of Community Relations for Boston Kevin A. McCluskey ’76 said that Harvard has specified preferred hours of operations in their most recent leases to restaurants to ease residents’ concerns.

McCluskey said that he opposed the extended hours because “we want to be very mindful of the quality of this residential neighborhood.”

—Staff writer Nathalie R. Miraval can be reached at nmiraval@college.harvard.