JEROME CLEARY 🔹 More gridlock: The gift that keeps on giving

Yes, it may be hard to believe but three city council members who are no longer in office have left us a legacy that many of us may never forget.

If you have not been paying attention a Chevron Car Wash Project was approved by three former city council members: John Duran, John D’Amico and Lindsey Horvath.

Do we still think emergency vehicle access is important? Well yes of course. Can you now image the future for emergency vehicle access for first responders trying to get through the intersection of Holloway Drive and LaCienega? It’s going to be a hell of a mess.

Let me update you how we got into this big trouble.

March 5th 2020 a week before the global pandemic there was a planning commission meeting where several of the planning commissioners were not doing their job. A neighbor told me that one of the planning commissioners John Erickson who is now on the council actually apologized to her for voting yes on it. He even said he was not looking at it close enough. Well isn’t that crazy.

Cut to five months later the appeal I filed was finally heard on Zoom during the pandemic in August 2020. John Heilman recused himself because he lives to close to the project and Lauren Meister voted yes to support my appeal. Then here’s where it gets ugly. John D’Amico, John Duran and Lindsey Horvath voted to approve this Chevron Car wash project.

Here are the plans approved by both the planning commission and the city council:

The project has a demolition of the over 1,700 square foot Chevron service station building with an added 24 hour store that will sell beer and wine. There will be the construction of 900 square foot automated car wash. There is a third part of a store that will be leased to some unknown future business.

During my appeal I opposed the project based on that it does not adequately address the traffic mitigation, it adds more beer and wine sales to an area that has a lot of beer and wine sales, that there was not proper noticing to the neighborhood and the problems with the planning commission approval procedures. That it does not address or comply with the environmental regulations and that the onsite parking in the plans is not enough.

Then during this appeal hearing John D’Amico did something really odd he asked that they remove the eastern most driveway along Holloway Drive. Which for some reason he believed this would help.

An Empire West resident expressed her being alarmed by three businesses that have never been there before would impact a notoriously dangerous intersection where serious car accidents resulted in six deaths.

I expressed my concern about the car wash that would add to the traffic and that the long lines of cars would block the gas pumps and the driveways access.

Now we are stuck with an intersection that many residents in the know will plan to avoid once this project is done. For those not in the know, the commuters well now they will be tangled up in this mess along with the MTA buses that access this intersection.

And finally there has never been a traffic study for this.