Manhattan Tuesday cleared the way for a developer to pursue a building permit for a second Tommy’s Express Car Wash in West Manhattan.
Despite traffic concerns, Manhattan City Commissioners unanimously voted to amend Westloop Shopping Center’s final development plan in order to allow the car wash under some conditions laid out by the Manhattan Urban Area Planning Board.
The applicant, Frontier Investments, intends to demolish and replace the vacant bank building near the Claflin entrance to the shopping center with the new Tommy’s. After redevelopment, the 31,000 square foot site will feature a 4,500 square foot car wash with vacuum stations on the west side of the building.
The developers will also realign the southwest driveway on the site to be an exit-only drive and open up further from the Claflin intersection to coincide with the driveway near Family & Implant Dentistry.
In order to progress further, Frontier will need to submit a final irrigation plan and landscape performance agreement and noise specifications for the car wash and vacuum equipment. Other conditions require downcasting all lighting to prevent impacting neighboring residences and ensuring a planned digital sign meets city sign regulations — both of which Assistant Community Development Director Chad Bunger says they’ve checked off.
Much of the concerns about the project stemmed from potential traffic backups in the shopping center and onto city streets. As part of the process, the applicant created a traffic circulation plan to receive approval from Westloop owner Brixmor SPE 3, LLC and neighboring businesses.
The traffic flow for the Tommy’s envisions most customers entering from the Anderson Avenue entrance onto Westloop Place. Bunger says they don’t expect cars to backup onto Westloop often as the site should be able stack up to 20 waiting vehicles with an additional 12 in various stages of the wash cycle.
“There should be ample capacity on the site, but if not […] there is plenty of driving aisle on Westloop Place that would have the interior capacity and not have the need for vehicles to flow out onto the public roadways.”
Applicant Kasey Graham of Frontier Investments says they envision traffic backing up onto Westloop Place “at most” three to five days a year, saying the diagram showing how a potential backup would flow is an “extreme worst case” scenario.
“We really have the same set up on the East side of town on Tuttle Creek [Boulevard] with almost the same amount of stacking,” Graham says. “To my knowledge, we haven’t had any complaints at that facility.”
Even so, the Manhattan Urban Area Planning Board and city commission hinged approval on an additional condition — posting a sign at the Anderson entrance into Westloop telling motorists not to block the intersection. Graham also says employees will assist with traffic circulation on those particularly busy days.
Despite that, commissioners remained concerned about traffic backups. Mayor Usha Reddi says she avoids that Claflin entrance near the gas station due to the current levels of traffic and expressed concern that increases in traffic could be a safety hazard.
“I also don’t want this to end up like what we used to see at Starbucks down in Aggieville where cars are just lined up one way or another,” says Reddi.
Commissioner Linda Morse also questioned whether traffic will flow as anticipated, envisioning customers also trying to enter from Claflin and leading to backups both way on Westloop Place as cars wait their turn to enter the Tommy’s site.
“I respect the work of the planning board, I just have been to this area enough to have had traffic issues,” says Morse.
Mayor Pro Tempore Wynn Butler compared the existing Tommy’s site with the proposed location, saying the Tommy’s off of the TCB Frontage Road has three lanes leading into it that helps mitigate traffic jams. The site in Westloop only has a two lane drive leading to the entrance.
“That’s a problem right there,” says Butler. “We can say hopefully that won’t happen, but if it does that’s going to disrupt what happens at Dillons and Marshalls and every place else.”
Bunger says the travel easements that constitute Westloop Place are private, and as such the city doesn’t have as much “charge” to re-stripe lanes and driving ways. Public Works Director Rob Ott also added that the peak hours of use for car washes are at different times than Claflin’s peak use time, and that the existing bank drive-thru had a higher traffic flow than the planned car wash is anticipated to have. The existing zoning accounted for 73 vehicles during the peak hour compared to Tommy’s anticipated 45 vehicles.
“We just have all gotten so used to that [being]a vacant bank today,” Ott says.
The planning board also recommended an additional two conditions for approval. They advised Public Works to review the turning radius at the Southwest driveway out of the Tommy’s site, which Ott says was adequate. Additionally, they recommended Public Works review extending the right turn lane. Officials preferred to leave that to private ownership, noting significant landscape work that would entail.
Commissioner Mark Hatesohl also had concerns about the rate of traffic coming out of the car wash leading to backups, but was generally supportive. He says the development is private and at the end of the day isn’t really the city’s business if the neighbors sign off. Hatesohl says if a problem does arise, though, they’ll pass along the complaints to Brixmor and Frontier until the issue is resolved.
“It’s not like this is the last time anything can ever be done with this,” he says. “We can always adapt, change, amend it as we see.”
Originally posted at https://1350kman.com/manhattan-amends-westloop-development-plan-to-allow-for-new-tommys/
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