At the Town of Clay Planning Board's Jan. 29 meeting, Chairman Russ Mitchell polled the board by name on a proposed shopping plaza at the corner of Lawton Road and Route 31, and one after another, members said no. Six of the board's seven members individually opposed drive-thru lanes for a bank and a Dunkin coffee shop planned for the site. Yet the only motion the board actually voted on didn't reject anything — it simply agreed to pass those objections along to the Town Board, which will decide. The applicant, Mirabito Energy Products, is proposing to turn the parcel's northern section into an approximately 6,650-square-foot plaza anchored by an NBT Bank, a Dunkin, a gas station with a convenience store, and a Subway, according to engineer Matt Napierala of Napierala Consulting, who presented the plan. The site would include 36 parking spaces and four EV charging stations, with two drive-thru lanes positioned so that vehicles exiting the bank's lane would sit next to vehicles entering the coffee shop's lane. A separate, undeveloped southern portion of the parcel would continue to handle stormwater drainage for the surrounding Lawton Valley neighborhood. Napierala told the board the corner has a 25-year history: when developer Kelly Tobin built the Lawton Valley subdivision around it, the planning board directed that this parcel be set aside rather than folded into the housing, earmarking it instead for future mixed-use development. That history came up again during public comment. Wyandra Drive resident Sara Villnave told the board that promises had been made when the subdivision went in that the corner would stay green space, and that those promises were not kept. Four other residents spoke against the project. Larry Fratostitan of Ernest Way said too much would be going on at the intersection. Joe Morawski of Tobin Path said a Dunkin at the site would hurt a family-owned coffee shop already operating in nearby Cicero. Karen Cahill of Dongara Lane pressed the board on how fuel tankers would navigate Lawton Road and whether the project would move forward regardless of the board's recommendation. Yvonne Arnold, also of Wyandra Drive, questioned a proposed left turn onto Route 31. Board members' objections centered on the corner's traffic and layout rather than the businesses themselves. Mitchell said he had no problem with Mirabito as a store but questioned whether the intersection could handle two drive-thru lanes on top of gas pumps, a convenience store and a Subway, and recalled that an earlier gas-station proposal for the same corner had been turned down over a car wash's noise. Hal Henty and Michelle Borton agreed, with Borton citing poor visibility around the Dunkin. Karen Guinup said she opposed both drive-thrus, citing pedestrian conflicts near the pumps and overlapping morning hours between the bank and the coffee shop. Paul Graves pointed to congestion he said was already visible at another Dunkin drive-thru on Route 31. Jim Palumbo took a middle position, saying he would support the coffee shop's drive-thru but not the bank's, after board attorney Kathleen Bennett confirmed that a special permit granted for a bank use stays tied to that use. When Mitchell polled the board by name, Henty, Guinup, Borton, Graves, Al McMahon and Mitchell himself all said no; Palumbo repeated his split position. The board's only recorded vote on the matter, though, was a 7-0 motion adopting a standard special permit recommendation resolution directing the Town Board to weigh the comments and concerns raised by each member — not a vote to deny anything. Mitchell told the audience during the hearing that no matter what the planning board recommended, the Town Board holds final authority over the special permits and could still approve Mirabito's plans for the corner. The Town Board will next decide the two referrals. If either or both permits are approved, the project would return to the planning board for full site plan review, where Town Engineer Ron DeTota has already flagged questions about how the plaza's drainage would interact with the neighborhood's existing stormwater facility. Elsewhere on the same agenda, the board moved with more certainty: it granted approvals for the Trinity Assembly of God's amended site plan and the Michael's Farm subdivision on Morgan Road, both by 7-0 votes, while a McDonald's special permit referral for the nearby Cedar Post Road corner was withdrawn after the Town Board denied it outright.