Appropriately so, much of the Lancaster community has been voicing objections to truck traffic on Pleasant View Drive. The town has been working with the State and County to get signage posted to eliminate trucks of certain size and weight on the two-lane county road.
With Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s directive to replace every physical toll booth in the state with a cashless, electronic system by 2020, the towns The Towns of Lancaster, Clarence and Cheektowaga are hoping the Williamsville toll barrier will be deconstructed and replaced with an electronic gantry.
Town officials can revisit the idea of having the Thruway Authority install additional Thruway entrances/exits that could alleviate traffic problems in each respective town – Gunnville Road in Lancaster and Youngs Road in Cheektowaga. An entrance at Gunnville Road would alleviate truck and vehicle traffic on Pleasant View Drive.
At the same time, the county is designing a project to alleviate traffic and traffic safety issues on William Street between Union Road in Cheektowaga and Bowen Road in Lancaster. Without federal and state funding the road improvement project is dead on arrival.
William Street may not have a truck usage problem, but it well exceeds the overall traffic volume of Pleasant View Drive – on the Lancaster and Cheektowaga side. Soon a Chick fil-A will be opening at the intersection of Transit Road and William. A Delta Sonic is also being built within three-quarters of a mile south of the Transit – William/Losson intersection.
Despite Willian Street traffic routinely backing up onto Transit Road because of the short queuing distance between signalization at Transit Road and the Walmart/Orville’s signalized driveways, the Lancaster Zoning of Appeals( granted a 35 parking space variance to Benderson Development – required to build a Rachel’s Mediterranean Restaurant in the Aldi’s complex and where traffic exits at Orville’s signal on William.
The requirement for this tenant buildout space is 193 parking spaces. The tenant has room for only 158 parking spaces and petitioned for and received a 35-parking space variance. If one were to visit the Aldi complex, he or she would have to ask (once again), ‘what the hell is the town thinking’? The spaces are indeed needed and especially when one sees the distance away to the provided parking spaces not immediately in front of the four businesses occupying the retail building – 16 allotted spaces for four businesses; 2 are handicapped spaces. Orville’s employees are already complaining that clients shopping in the Benderson complex are parking on their location.
It is the ZBA ‘findings’ that are illogical. The ZBA board determined:
• That the alleged difficulty is self-created, but not to the extent necessary to preclude the granting of the variance. *
• That the benefit sought by the applicant cannot be achieved by some other method, feasible for the applicant to pursue, other than the variance sought. **
• That the board has taken into consideration the benefit to the applicant if the variance relief sought is granted as weighed against the detriment to the health, safety and welfare of the community by such grant. ***
Comments
*Self-created, indeed. The applicant received building site plan approval in 2017. This complex (Aldi and this building) is General Business zoned and the petitioner had to know this building was required to not exceed number or types of businesses that would impinge on total parking space requirement.
**The applicant knows what was expected when site plan approval was granted in 2015 - more so when Aldi expanded in 2017.
***This variance does indeed adversely impact the safety and welfare of the community. It decreases the number of spaces and forces individuals to walk great greater distances from businesses – and too often in inclement weather; especially snow and icy pavement. With only 16 parking spaces, shared by four businesses, it not only adversely impacts individuals walking greater distances to park, but having to cross a busy main driveway without crosswalk or signage in place to allow pedestrians a break in traffic.
It is nothing more than once again a developer trying to put 10 lbs. of **** in a 5 lb. bag.
It was also interesting to see a sign posted in the window of the vacant building location announcing: ‘Rachel’s, coming soon’ before the ZBA hearing took place. And now there is signage on William Street before other necessary town approvals are received.