A new Chick-fil-A is coming to Goleta, after Santa Barbara County planning officials on Wednesday unanimously approved its construction—satisfied the restaurant’s drive-thru won’t significantly pollute the air.
“It’s really clear to me that there is great dedication to making this work,” Second District commissioner Kate Ford said.
“This county has consistently approved these drive-thrus,” Third District Commissioner John Parke said. “To deny Chick-fil-A would be something that’s somewhat indefensible.”
Chick-fil-A enthusiast Roy Millender smiled and clapped after the vote. Earlier, he’d spoken to the commission in favor of the project, echoing the sentiments of a strong and loyal local fanbase.
“We love the place,” Millender, a Santa Barbara attorney and former Westmont College economics and business professor said, describing his family’s frequent patronage of the existing Chick-fil-A on upper State Street less than three miles from where the new one will rise.
“I tell the managers that since I work out of my home, this is my office. I meet with clients and I meet with friends at Chick-fil-A,” Millender said. “It’s a joy… They have a secret sauce that really works.”
While the project has received strong public backing—including 722 signed cards of support mostly from Isla Vista and Goleta residents, company officials said—it’s also drawn the ire of opponents concerned about noise, traffic, public safety and neighborhood livability.
Questioning the effects of vehicle exhaust, the five-member commission in March voted 3-2 against the 2,647-square-foot-structure and two-lane drive-thru proposed for the site of a shuttered IHOP restaurant, next to Starbucks, at 4765 Calle Real and the Highway 101 offramp at South Turnpike Road.
Wednesday’s hearing was a chance for the Atlanta-based restaurant chain to respond to the commissioners’ concerns and elaborate on how the vehicle queue will function.
The 66-seat restaurant is proposed for an area already impacted by popular drive-thru businesses. Next door is Starbucks, where cars sometimes queue out of the parking lot and onto Calle Real, and across the intersection is In-N-Out Burger, which consistently attracts long lines.
Acknowledging it might seem counterintuitive, a drive-thru actually helps reduce air pollution, Beth Collins, a land use attorney for Chick-fil-A, told the commission.
“There is ample, ample evidence,” she said, adding advances in technology like online ordering as well as thoughtful queue management also help keep a drive-thru efficient.
Specifically, Collins said, a car will “hot soak,” or evaporate fuel, after it’s turned off and its occupants go inside a restaurant. The car emits even more pollution once it’s started back up, and this in total creates more harmful emissions than a car that’s idling in a drive-thru queue, she said.
A 2008 memo from the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District (APCD) to the Planning Commission supports this analysis, and county officials have consulted it as evidence during other drive-thru approvals.
Resident Suzann Sturz, who lives near the Chick-fil-A project site, questioned why officials were relying on nearly 20-year-old data to guide their decision-making.
“All of the current drive-thrus in the entire South Coast unincorporated area are within 300 yards of each other near the Turnpike-Calle Real intersection,” Sturz told the commission, urging members to deny the project.
However, Collins told the commission that the APCD data had been repeatedly reaffirmed.
An estimated 85 percent of the time, the new drive-thru will have a queue of 19 cars or fewer. During peak conditions, the queue will hold up to 32 cars, more than required, Collins said.
The nearby existence of the Upper State Street Chick-fil-A also will help reduce pollution at the Goleta site, according to county staff planners.
“There’s an existing Chick-fil-A restaurant located approximately 2.7 miles east,” said WIllow Brown, county supervising planner. “By adding the second Chick-fil-A location, the cumulative vehicle miles traveled will be reduced because it can be assumed that the majority of existing customers will go to whichever location they are closest to.”
Chick-fil-A sparks a polarized reaction among consumers.
In 2023, the upper State Street location reopened with a wider driveway, an additional drive-thru lane and reconfigured a parking lot following months of controversy over its operations. The city of Santa Barbara had threatened to shut down the drive-thru there after cars and trucks kept queuing into the street.
Nationally, the restaurant chain came under scrutiny in 2012 following its then-CEO’s opposition to same-sex marriage as well as corporate donations to causes considered anti-LGBTQ+. The company later announced it would change its charitable giving strategies.
