Circle K Coming to CR?

Yesterday, I was sent a picture of a site plan for a Circle K that appears to be wanting to go on the lot on the corner of US 19 and Fort Island Trail.

So let's take a look.

The plans are 16 pages. You can view them in their entirety here.

It appears this will be a truck stop type facility as well as having 7 gas pumps for cars/trucks in the front. There appears to be 5 semi-truck fueling bays in the back.

The application for an Environment Resource Permit is still pending with SWFWMD. They did a site visit on July 10th and noted some additional issues, mostly in regards to the wetlands area that is on site. This is the area highlighted blue in the site plans below.

The engineers on the project state that the wetlands will not be impacted due to a 25ft buffer between them and the service station, but SWFWMD feels some of the responses were not properly addressed.

This is normal back and forth for a project like this. Engineer sends documents, government agency wants more clarity. However, it appears clear that the engineers feel there will be no impacts to the wetlands due to the 25ft buffer. They have stated this numerous times.

The question then shifts... What can be done to stop it?

Unfortunately, not much.

This is within the city limits, so it is city jurisdiction. This will NOT come before the Board of County Commissioners. They will not be voting on this project, however, it does not mean they cant help (more on this in a second).

Mayor Joe Meek said in a FB response last night that there may not be much the city can do due to the zoning of the property. But we will see if the city has some options in a bit.

The property is in fact zoned UC-1 (Urban Center 1) which allows some pretty intense uses.

And some allowable commercial uses.

And some definitions of those uses.

And this talks specifically about gas stations.

So it would appear that a gas station/convenience store could be located within the UC-1 zoning.

However, the Community Development Code does not speak to truck stop type places nor defines them as afar as I can tell.

What separates a gas service station from a more intense use of a truck stop type facility? Does this classify as something more intense due to the 5 dueling bays for semi-trucks? Could this be the route the city takes to stop it... or at very least, reduce the intensity?

So we will see.

A bigger question I have is why did the city not foresee that as something that could potentially happen? It was not that long ago when the county faced something similar in Homosassa with 7-11. The county took steps to make sure that gas stations had more difficulty going into the Coastal High Hazard Areas of the county.

Why did the city not take steps to do the same? This areas is certainly in the CHHA, as seen in the map here.

Why did the city not use that moment to take a step back and say "Do we really want gas stations in these areas?"

In theory, based on the zoning maps, if someone were to demolish the Plantation Inn, they could build a gas station there as well with the current zoning. Other areas by the water could potentially have gas stations as well.

Seems like the county going through those issues with the gas station would have prompted the city to do something similar.

But here we are... and the city may not have any options.

Which brings me back to commissioners.

Can the commissioners use their influence to reach out to the state agencies and see if there is anything that can be done to address this? There may be nothing they can do at this point, but doesn't hurt to make the call.

We will see where all this goes...