Christopher Peak Photos
BZA’s Trachten (inset, at left) rescues gas station’s buyers.
New Haven’s zoners offered a Solomonic solution for a debate between neighbors and developers over whether to allow a convenience store in an industrial zone: How about a kiosk instead?
The compromise was offered by the Board of Zoning Appeals in response to a request by developers for a variance to allow them to open a 1,200-square-foot convenience store as part of their plans to reopen a gas station at 670 Ella T. Grasso Blvd.
A City Plan staff report suggested that the board vote down the request by Sardar LLC’s Gurant Narain and Avtar Singh, business partners who own another gas station just across city limits in West Haven and want to buy the Boulevard property. (Click here to read the arguments why, detailed at a public hearing in July.)
At a BZA meeting this past Tuesday night, Benjamin Trachten, the board’s chair, bucked staff’s advice and suggested granting the request, but only for a reduced 250-square-foot kiosk. The board voted 5 – 0 to approve that compromise.
After the decision, Leslie Radcliffe, a City Plan Commissioner and active neighbor in the Upper Hill, voiced disapproval. She had opposed the mini-mart because she worried it would become a magnet for drag racers on the Boulevard. But she didn’t have the authority to stop it at City Plan Commission.
The property, where Sardar LLC is expected to close a sale after winning approval for a kiosk.
The lot in question was previously run by Santa Fleet Services, where commercial vehicles refueled since approximately 2001 through a subscription program. If a purchase goes through, potential buyer Sardar LLC plans to open up the tanks to any driver and earn a bit extra in sales at a mini-mart.
“I’ve been aware of this site for a long time, and it’s always been a gas station. I realize it was more of a fleet-services station, where large trucks would come and fill up. There wasn’t an attendant and there was no sale of convenience goods,” Trachten said. “Nevertheless, I think these kinds of uses aren’t going to survive within the City of New Haven. There needs to be a small amount of convenience goods,” like “condoms and cigarettes and whatever other fun stuff they need to buy at 2 a.m., milk, bread, lettuce.”
“But I think you can accomplish that within 250 square feet,” Trachten added.
Attorney Tim Yolen presents the gas station’s plans at a July zoning board meeting.
Tom Talbot, the city’s deputy zoning director, said that was fine by him. He opposed a bigger operation whose scale rivaled a grocery store, but he doesn’t object to the sale of incidental items on site, he clarified.
The developers’ attorney, Tim Yolen, called BZA decision a “slight victory” given the strenuous requirements to get a variance. He estimated that the smaller kiosk should still have room enough for a bathroom, a small cooler of soda, a few racks of food and household items and a counter for cigarettes and lottery tickets.
“I think my clients were disappointed, but I also believe that they most likely will go forward with the transaction,” Yolen said. “A little bit is better than nothing, and hopefully my clients will be pleased with that.”
Leslie Radcliffe voiced opposition to the project at a City Plan Commission meeting in July.
Radcliffe, by contrast, wasn’t pleased with the approval, the last item on the agenda. After the meeting finished, Trachten said, “Now, everybody in the audience, go home! You have families; you love them.”
“We also have residents that live near that gas station,” Radcliffe yelled out, “where they’re going to be selling condoms and candy bars at 2 o’clock in the morning and driving their race-cars and motorcycles and run over pedestrians at 3 o’clock in the morning.”
Like Solomon, they offered to cut the baby in half? Is that good?
In this case, neighbors think it will still generate "bad customers" and yet the selection will be tiny and poor for all of the "good customers". I don't get it, half-a-baby sounds like the worst outcome, not a compromise.
Gas stations only exist today to draw customers to their minimarts, there is (luckily for us drivers) almost no retail profit in the gasoline sales. This idea that "we will allow a gas station without a minimart" is straight out of the 1960s. How about we insist the gas attendants clean your windshield and check your oil, while we are at it.