Circle K OK’d for Veterans, Country Club intersection
Over the emotional objection by more than a dozen residents who spoke before City Council Monday night, a proposed development of a Circle K convenience store with gas pumps at the southwest intersection of Country Club Boulevard and Veterans Parkway was narrowly approved by a 5-3 vote of council members.
“This is a perfect example of why we have a hearing examiner,” said Community Development Director Vince Cautero. “The examiner hears the facts and applies them to the case without the emotion. The letters of opposition and the speakers tonight are based on emotion.”
Both the hearing examiner and city planners recommended ap-proval, which asked for rezoning from professional office to pedestrian commercial, a special exception for the fuel pumps and deviations from setbacks and other conditions required by planners.
The nearly 5,000 square-foot convenience store also features eight gas pumps with a canopy with frontage on three streets. One right turn only lane on the west side of Country Club will grant access to the store property with two ingress and egress driveways on Southeast 26th Street.
The main concern of the residents were traffic related safety and congestion issues, property values, crime and noise. A church that shares Southeast 26th Street for access shared concerns for liability and security for pedestrians wandering onto their property or using it as access to and from Jason Verdow Park.
Church members laid out concerns for congestion exiting Southeast 26th Street onto Country Club being worse than at the conclusion of worship services. Turning north means crossing several lanes of traffic while turning south could lead to U-turns and traffic on residential streets seeking routes back onto Country Club.
“We’ve had these same concerns with other gas station projects,” said Council-member Richard Leon. “Crime did not go up, traffic issues were minimal and property values did not go down. With growth comes encroachment on residential areas by commercial development.”
Developers of the property conducted a traffic analysis that projected 250 peak-hour afternoon trips to the property, but only 34 percent of those are considered new trips added to the roadways as opposed to pass-bys stopping on the way to other destinations.
Councilmember Jessica Cosden, who revealed that she has ties to the church, said she is worried about an increase in accidents as cars try to negotiate the left-hand turn onto Country Club.
“This is not the best place for this business,” said Cosden. “The improvements allow people to get to the store, but nothing helps get them out. Southeast 26th Street is basically a private driveway. My concern is about a traffic bottleneck.”
Cosden was one of the three members who cast the dissenting votes. The others were Jim Burch and Rick Williams.
“This is another commercial case for bringing in low paying jobs,” said Williams. “We need to attract more professional businesses with higher paying jobs, not more low paying service jobs.”
Williams believes that had the project been for professional or medical offices there would be no push-back by residents.
“We have turned some of the best intersections in this city over to projects like Circle K,” said Burch. “That is just not acceptable.The property was zoned professional for a reason, because of the neighborhood. I was neutral on this and very much want to say that as a pre-platted city, commercial will help, but I think this will be exacerbated by it. It makes no sense to me.”
Circle K representatives offered to address the concern of the church congregation by putting up a fence on their property to help keep pedestrians off their property.
Sidewalks also were suggested to be added to the project.