Welcome to “Snarshall,” where the coffee’s hot, but the access is not.

In St. Paul, drivers turning east off Snelling Avenue into the Marshall Avenue drive-thru of a new Starbucks coffee shop are backing up traffic into the intersection.

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St. Paul man threatened another man with a sword, charges say And that’s not just any intersection. Snelling Avenue — which is also Minnesota highway 51 — carries drivers through the city from Highland Park to Roseville, meeting Interstate 94 at exits a few blocks from the intersection.

Meanwhile, customers who have attempted to navigate the narrow drive-thru report tight turns and scraped fenders, as well as near-misses with drivers backing out of parking stalls. Bryan Kennedy, a web developer, tried the drive-thru “in a moment of weakness” and could barely squeeze through in his subcompact car.

“It’s a mess,” Kennedy said.

A store manager on Tuesday referred calls to a media line at Starbucks headquarters.

BUSY INTERSECTION

Under the heading “exceptional traffic counts,” the Stan Johnson Co. real estate brokerage — which helped market the site — describes the combined vehicular traffic at Snelling and Marshall as exceeding 67,000 cars per day.

And by all appearances, those numbers are about to climb. St. Paul is growing, and the Midway — which is already home to multiple colleges and shopping centers — may soon absorb a fair share of traffic.

That drive through is ridiculous. I only ever did it once, but could barely negotiate the turns in Honda Fit! — bryan kennedy (@xbryanx) September 4, 2017

Construction crews recently broke ground on a Major League Soccer stadium with more than 19,000 seats just up the street, off Snelling and University avenues. In 2016, a Whole Foods grocery opened along Snelling next to the Vintage on Selby, a housing development featuring dozens of upscale apartments.

There’s yet another wrinkle at the Snelling-Marshall intersection that some social media users jokingly refer to as “Snarshall.” In 2014, the city of St. Paul and Ramsey County removed center turn lanes along Marshall and installed a bike lane along the street’s south side from Snelling to Lexington Parkway.

BOLLARDS!

At the urging of neighborhood advocates with the Union Park District Council, the city recently installed bollards — flexible safety tubes to delineate lanes — along the bike lane, but they keep getting struck down by vehicles navigating the tight turn. On Monday, at least one bollard appeared flattened and another had been knocked into the center of the bike lane, effectively blocking cyclists.

Meanwhile, drivers who turn into the Starbucks report tight turns inside the lot, as well, with drive-thru customers struggling to avoid cars backing out of parking stalls. “That drive-thru is ridiculous,” said Kennedy, the web developer. “I only ever did it once, but could barely negotiate the turns in Honda Fit!”

It is terribly tight for my midsize, at that entrance and the drive thru itself. my gf scraped my fender there when borrowing my car https://t.co/XpwEoNEWR8 — Eric Osekowsky (@EricOsekowsky) September 5, 2017

Union Park District Council staff met with representatives from Starbucks and the city in June to discuss possible ways to improve the situation, such as adding the bollards and additional street parking on Marshall or prohibiting left-hand turns out of the Starbucks lot onto Marshall.

To open the drive-thru, Starbucks obtained a conditional use permit from the city, as well as a zoning variance allowing a smaller store than usual. During planning in September 2015, the Union Park District Council had deadlocked, with a 7-7 vote, on whether to support the permit and variance.

Julie Reiter, executive director of the Union Park District Council, said in March that she met a city planner for coffee at Starbucks in order to show him the traffic back-ups firsthand. “We saw cars backing up … across Snelling,” she said.

In mid-June, she met with four representatives from Starbucks, as well as officials from St. Paul planning, the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections and the St. Paul Department of Public Works.

“We talked about everything from modifying the site plan internally … to shutting down the drive-thru,” Reiter said.

The district council’s land-use committee sent a resolution to the city this summer supporting the closure of the Starbucks drive-thru and revocation of its conditional use permit “unless and until the obstructions of the adjacent right-of-way are removed.”

In response, city officials promised to install the bollards and require Starbucks to provide traffic control from 7 to 9 a.m. to ensure that the traffic and bike lanes and sidewalk are not blocked.