CALLAWAY, Md. — After hours of deliberation from the St. Mary’s County Planning Commission, the plan to bring a 7-Eleven gas station and convenience store to Callaway had their proposal pushed back at least one more month.
The board has been dealing with 7-Eleven’s expansion into the county more recently, after previously voting down a concept plan in Leonardtown and approving one in Lexington Park back on Feb. 10. The Callaway hearing was continued once before at that same meeting, to a date that was eventually scrapped due to the coronavirus until Monday night.
The plans, which show the intended placement of the franchise at the corner of Piney Point Rd and Point Lookout Road(Route 5), appeared to meet most of the requirements of the Planning Commission, but still drew criticism for a handful of issues.
“I know the commission members are well aware that this is only concept site plan approval and my client has a long road to go before final site plan approval by [St. Mary’s County Planning Director William Hunt],” Chris Longmore, the attorney representing the 7-Eleven project, said from his zoom square at the meeting. “We simply think that this design best suits this site, for what my client is proposing to put there. That it is the safest site and the one that will be most advantageous to their customers once it is developed…”
The first issue, which ultimately led to the postponement of the project until August, came from the adjusted traffic patterns and potential problems with the proposed entrances onto the property.
“You don’t know what delivery companies are doing nowadays,” Planning Commission Chairman Howard Thompson said. “Nowadays, they like to get in a bigger truck because they are taking care of a bigger district [and] they are bringing all their supplies in on one big truck… Any other type of material that [7-Eleven] would sell could come in there on a big truck and I would feel a whole lot more comfortable with the decision, knowing that the entryway is thoroughly looked into or approved by [the State Highway Administration(SHA)]. That takes a big part of my decision-making.”
Additional concerns raised by the board and from public comments during the evening included how the project may impact traffic backups at that intersection, how the intersection might become saturated with a third gas station, and how the transformation of that portion of Route 5 into a four-lane highway in a number of years might require cutting into a portion of the property.
It can also be noted that the property falls under the “Callaway Village Center,” which is designated a third-tier “growth area” by the St. Mary’s County Comprehensive Plan, with the purpose “to serve as the focus for rural community facilities, services, and activities.”
“If I was an applicant getting ready to put in a service like this I would really think about what it’s going to be post-COVID-19, especially here… I’m not sure that I would want to be the owner of the fifth convince store/gas station [in the area],” Planning Commission Co-Chair Joesph Van Kirk said at the meeting. “On the other side of that… Unfortunately, I don’t think it is part of our criteria to tell an applicant how many gas stations you can have, or how many convenience stores you can have. I also feel it’s a bit much but I don’t think it’s something that we can base anything on.”
The board has again moved to re-continue the Callaway concept site plan again to Aug. 17 at 6:30 pm, with hopes of having further guidance from SHA on the project and even more public feedback.
Contact Zach at zach.hill@thebaynet.com
