A Dairy Queen planned in Southeast Portland will include a drive-thru after all.

Last year, Portland Permitting & Development issued a letter to the owner of the lot at 5605 S.E. Division St., which formerly held a Dairy Queen. The city requested removal of a drive-thru from the owner’s plans to rebuild the fast-food restaurant.

The property owner fought back — and won.

Mohan Grewal, who represents the Beaverton-based ownership group, argued that the drive-thru is a legal nonconforming use at the property, which had a Dairy Queen drive-thru for more than five decades before it was demolished several years ago.

Permitting officials reconsidered their position and, on Dec. 29, 2025, issued a decision allowing inclusion of a drive-thru with the new restaurant.

The move comes as the city has tightened regulation of drive-thrus. City code generally prohibits the construction of new drive-thrus.

But existing drive-thrus are allowed in the mixed-use zoning, and city code provides that “existing facilities can be rebuilt, expanded or relocated on the site.”

The ex-Dairy Queen building was demolished sometime between summer 2019 and May 2020, and Akum Investment Group, a Beaverton limited liability company, sought to build a new Dairy Queen with a drive-thru on the lot.

The former restaurant was built in 1955; it’s not clear if the drive-thru was part of the original building. But it had been there for decades: The applicant submitted a newspaper article and signed declarations from a regional Dairy Queen executive and a family member of the former owners, all indicating that a drive-thru was operating there by 1968, when city code had no prohibitions on drive-thrus.

Portland zoning code began regulating drive-thrus in 1991, depending on the zone or plan district, according to Portland Permitting & Development.

“Over time, drive-throughs have been further limited in more plan districts and overlay zones with the intent of removing the influence of vehicles and emphasizing pedestrian access,” Portland Permitting & Development spokesman Ken Ray stated in an email.

Portland began prohibiting new drive-thrus in most commercial zones in 2018 as part of the city’s 2035 comprehensive plan.

Some residents, led by those in the Mount Tabor Neighborhood Association, argued that because the drive-thru had been absent from the site for more than three years, Akum no longer had a right to rebuild it.

After Akum protested with the help of Lake Oswego lawyer Wendie Kellington, PP&D changed tack. Permitting & Development staff determined last month that city code does not necessarily require drive-thrus to be continuously operated to maintain the right to have one on the site. (Kellington did not respond to messages seeking comment).

The controversy regarding the vehicular dispensation of hot eats and cool treats drew significant public interest. PP&D received a blizzard of public comments — more than 200 were submitted via email — generating a 694-page case file.

Lauren Howard, a nearby resident, wrote that the city should not allow a new drive-thru on the lot.

“I believe the newer standards are the right fit for this neighborhood and better for safety, traffic and overall livability,” she wrote.

Another resident, Tim Silva, wrote that “traffic is too heavy in that area, and the street is too narrow.”

He added, “We don’t need backups on a two-lane road that is a major bus route and full of other vehicles. And we don’t need all those idling cars putting extra exhaust fumes into our neighborhood.”

The site lies across Division Street from Franklin High School and Atkinson Elementary School.

Other neighbors stated that the drive-thru should be allowed. Alice and Michael Powell wrote that the ownership “does have the legal right to include a drive-thru. A new DQ will be an addition to the neighborhood and a continuation of a fine tradition of family walks and occasional drives to DQ.”

The Portland Bureau of Transportation raised no objections to the drive-thru.

The building permit is set to expire on April 12 if no inspection activity occurs by then.

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Eric Kutch is the new director of the Portland Permitting & Development bureau following a national search, the city announced Monday. Kutch will lead the city’s permitting organization, which was formed last year to streamline permitting and development review services with a more customer-focused lens.

Kutch will start as Permitting & Development director early next month, while interim director David Kuhnhausen will be staying on as a part of PP&D’s leadership team. City spokesperson Elliott Kozuch stated in an email that details on Kuhnhausen’s new role are still being finalized.

Kutch currently serves as deputy assistant director and deputy building official for the city of Houston Permitting Center, where he oversees a team of more than 100 employees responsible for reviewing over 125,000 commercial and residential projects each year. Under his leadership, Houston improved permit timelines by 75 percent, reduced review delays across multiple disciplines, reopened same-day services for eligible projects and implemented real-time production tracking to improve transparency and performance, a press release states.

Kutch has spent his career combining his technical expertise in building codes and construction management with a focus on equity and customer service. He implemented multilingual service pathways, expanded both in-person and digital access and standardized review practices so applicants receive consistent, reliable and timely information regardless of project size or background, according to the release.

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Two Portland city councilors are pushing a resolution to reform the city’s design review process and perhaps provide a temporary exemption for housing proposals.

The effort represents a serious challenge to design review, which is overseen by Portland Permitting & Development. Developers have long blamed the process for delaying construction and adding costs, but supporters say it improves the design of proposed buildings that go through review and allows the public to weigh in on what’s built in the city.

Councilors Angelita Morillo and Eric Zimmerman are sponsoring the resolution, which will be discussed during Wednesday’s meeting. It directs the city administrator to deliver a report to the council within 120 days. The report would:

• include an overview of the types of design review, along with design overlay zones, design districts and historic districts to which design guidelines apply, and
• offer an economic impact analysis of design review on commercial and residential development timelines during the past five years, and projections for the next five years.

The city administrator would then provide options for a temporary exemption from design review and propose potential changes to the city code that underpins the design review process.

Design review “gets talked a lot about as a barrier, but what is the barrier gets a little fuzzy,” Zimmerman said Monday.

The report will “allow us to cut to the chase,” he added. “I would like to hear from the staff – what do they think are the most attackable problems?”

The design review study dovetails with other efforts to facilitate development in Portland. In July, the City Council approved a three-year waiver on system development charges for housing projects.

It’s still an “open question” whether a moratorium on design review would affect commercial projects as well as housing proposals, Zimmerman said.

He expressed concern that design review could deter unique proposals.

Local developers “know what gets through design review,” he said. “That worries me a little bit, because I want to see someone push the envelope a bit as far as awesomeness or uniqueness or density.”

Permitting & Development is open to discussing design review reform, according to agency spokesman Ken Ray.

“We look forward to working with the City Council on ways to bring more flexibility into design review to ensure the process supports thoughtful growth and investment in Portland’s buildings that meets the needs of the people who live, work and do business in them,” Ray stated in an email on Monday.

Design review has come under fire in other cities, including Seattle, where the process has become a roadblock to development.

“We can all agree that nice-looking buildings are a good thing and probably make it more popular to build stuff, but we can’t agree on what nice looking means,” said Michael Andersen, who studies cities for the nonprofit Sightline Institute. “It’s not something you can achieve from regulation.”

Portland’s design review process isn’t as dysfunctional as Seattle’s was before the Seattle City Council suspended design review requirements in September, Andersen said.

“F�ǰ��ٳܲԲ��ٱ����, Portland Design Commission hasn’t been utterly ridiculous,” he said. “But anytime you introduce discretion, you introduce risk.”

Bruce Studer, president of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, said there’s an appetite to streamline design review in Portland.

“I think people would want a little bit smarter way to go through design review,” he said. “I don’t think just being able to block things by stalling it out is something we want to have. You want developers to be able to build things that are smart, sustainable and create lasting growth.”

The Design Commission is composed of seven members who serve staggered four-year terms for up to eight years. Members hail from architecture, development, landscape architecture, arts and related fields, along with a member representing the public at large.

Zimmerman and Morillo’s resolution passed the council’s Climate, Resilience and Land Use Committee on Nov. 13 by a 4-0 vote.

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