The thorniest business proposition to come before the City Council in at least several years – a 7-Eleven convenience store at the long-vacant southeast corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Braddock Drive – was approved this morning, well after midnight, to the consternation of neighbors who say they already are inundated by traffic.
By a split 4 to 1 vote, rare these days, the Council approved a site plan for the one-story business with the caveat that the builder will underwrite revisits to traffic studies in six months and in 12 months.
Three public hearings – two for private schools seeking to grow – umbrella’d the City Council’s entire first back-to-work agenda after a four-week layoff.
Petitioners Prevail
Facing virtually no neighborly opposition, the Willows Community School in the Hayden Tract will be allowed to expand its campus.
The Help Group, whose Washington Boulevard school, adjacent to Kaiser Permanente, is designed for special needs children, was celebrating the overturning of a Planning Commission verdict last June that would have denied the school increasing its student population from 400 to 600 students.
Council member Meghan Sahli-Wells created a momentary hitch en route to the Help Group victory when she advocated granting permission for the school to add 250 students, its original petition, instead of the compromise figure of 200. All colleagues objected, including Mayor Andy Weissman who said the new figure would have skewered the extensive research he had conducted based on 200 new students.
Neither school case for growth was complicated or even vaguely contentious as the hot-button term 7-Eleven was and is.
The Help Group petition, rejected by the advisory Planning Commission on several grounds by a 3 to 2 vote, easily was overturned on this night, mainly on the strength of a single contention:
A Matter of Logic?
That since none of the students drive, unlike other schools, mainly they arrive at campus via buses and taxis plus a barely visible number of parent dropoffs. Therefore, it was reasoned, even though the proposed enrollment leap is 50 percent, traffic scarcely will be affected, based on the findings of city traffic engineer Barry Kurtz.
In recent years, the mere mention of putting up a 7-Eleven market has seemed to set off neighborhood alarms, regardless of location. The most frequent, though not only, stentorian complaint has been about increased traffic. Nearly as often as gripes are raised, city traffic officials find that the traffic increase will be easily bridgeable.
The evident solution to the loudest protest may be a scheme whereby the only entry is off Braddock Drive, the only exit spilling onto busy Sepulveda under a right-turn-only plan.
Councilman Jim Clarke noted that the 4 to 1 vote, with Ms. Sahli-Wells demurring, was the first non-unanimous call since he was elected in April.
He supported going forward, he said, because “we will be looking at the project six months out and 12 months out. Then we will take what mitigation measures are necessary.
Errors Were a Problem
“I was troubled, as my colleagues were, with information in the traffic study and the gap study that seemed flawed. But again, our traffic manager felt there was not an impact” on traffic at a corner that has been blank many years.
“At the end of the discussion,” said Mr. Clarke, “I said I would like to see a barrier placed on Sepulveda that would prevent a left turn, whether it is a median strip or something else, so you won’t be able to turn in there.
“I also asked them to consider the idea of entrance-only on Braddock. That way, people won’t be going down into the (adjacent residential) neighborhood. Basically, you will be creating a circular, clockwise pattern.”
Councilman Mehaul O’Leary, who did not get to bed until 3 this morning, said backing the store was a clear matter.
“I looked over the five areas where we had jurisdiction, from design to whether utilities are available for such a project,” he said. “It seemed the appellant had no disagreement with four of the five. It boiled down to the traffic study.
“As was noted, there were some errors in the staff report, specifically the gap study. The errors were pointed out and addressed. Our traffic engineer himself said a gap study was not necessary for a project like this, that he never had done one in 40 years.
“The more important studies did not contain any errors.
“He was confident the 2.1 cars would be entering and exiting the property, would not have a significant impact on the traffic on the street.
“It appears,” said Mr. O’Leary, “that the traffic on the street already is a major issue. So how can we blame a new project for something that already exists?
“It seems that what has been call Taco Bell Alley, across the street, was the more contentious issue.”
