Stewart’s Shops is looking to add another store in Clay, but residents aren’t quite ready to let the eastern New York-based convenience store chain put down its stakes just yet.
At the May 4 Clay Town Board meeting, residents raised concerns about increased traffic on Bear and Buckley roads, noise and light pollution and a possible decrease in home values.
Stewart’s opened its first Syracuse-area shop on Morgan Road in October 2014, and the company is seeking a zone change for a nine-acre parcel of land on the southeast corner of Bear and Buckley roads to build another convenience store and other commercial buildings.
Chuck Marshall, a real estate agent representing Stewart’s, and James Trasher, an engineer for CHA, presented a site plan to board that includes a standard Stewart’s Shops with 12 self-serve gas islands and three other commercial buildings, which could include a bank, a small restaurant and a strip of retail stores.
The nine-acre parcel is much larger than what Stewart’s typically uses. Marshall and Trasher said the company tends to look for spaces of two to three acres; the Morgan Road store sits on 1.5 acres.
Currently, the Bear-Buckley parcel is zoned R-APT Residential Apartment District. Stewart’s representatives asked the town board to consider a zone change to RC-1 Regional Commercial District. The company still would have to apply for a special use permit, since RC-1 does not explicitly allow what Stewart’s plan calls for.
“We had a problem finding possible tenants [for the other buildings] because of zoning,” Marshall said.
Trasher said Stewart’s wants “to be a good neighbor” by maintaining stormwater management ponds and preserving the buffer zone between the parcel and the residential area to the east.
Supervisor Damian Ulatowski said some residents were concerned the proposed shop would be open 24 hours a day, but Trasher said the store likely would be open from 4:30 a.m. until midnight.
The site plan shows one full-access and one right-turn-only ingress on Buckley Road and one full-access point on Bear Road, which residents said would increase traffic in an already busy intersection.
Town Councilor Naomi Bray pointed out that the Onondaga County Planning Board determined that a single access point could serve the Stewart’s site, but Trasher said a traffic study showed the three accesses would be “where the [Onondaga County Department of Transportation] would want them.”
Louis Rescignano, a resident who lives on Bear Road, said he was worried adding an access point on Bear Road would exacerbate the traffic problem.
“Who’s going to end up in my front yard? Because it’s happened many times,” Rescignano said. “There’s a line of cars waiting to turn [onto Buckley Road] already.”
Other residents in the audience called out that more cars coming and going at the Bear-Buckley intersection would be a “traffic catastrophe” and it would be “impossible” to add a designated lane to turn into the Stewart’s property.
Councilor Bob Edick suggested subdividing the property into smaller parcels, citing smaller commercial properties such as dentist offices in the Allen and Taft road areas, but Trasher said that added to already difficult zoning issues.
Resident Erik Turner of Meadow Wood Drive said he was concerned that the buffer zone between the commercial areas and the surrounding residential property was not large enough. Marshall said it measured 141 feet from the back of the farthest building to the property line; the minimum required distance is 80 feet.
Turner said he was also concerned that lighting on the proposed bank and noise from the restaurant would intrude on neighboring residents.
Meadow Wood Drive resident Jim Nash asked whether a large commercial property would negatively affect the value of his home. Assessor Robert Bick said there was no way to tell since the property has not been built out yet.
“A sale or two here or there is not a trend,” Bick said. “It’s speculation based on a nonexistent condition in the market.”
Ulatowski assured residents that the developers were presenting the “most intense buildout” scenario for the property and the site plan is only a conceptual idea of what the finished product would be.
“This is not cast in concrete,” he said.
The public hearing for the proposed Stewart’s Shops site plan has been adjourned to the June 1 town board meeting.
