07/13/1993 Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mrs. 0'Rourke is concerned about the traffic on not only the surrounding streets, but also the outlying streets. Mr. Thomas asked for the correct figures on car trips going to this store. Mr. Newberry-referred to page 10, figure 5 of the traffic report which stated that the average weekday two way total is 10,227 cars, i.e. 5,000 in and 5,000 out, and 10,601 on Saturdays. No study was done for the Elyria store since the configuration is totally different than this one, the Mentor store was used because it was similar. Mr. King ad.vised that there were about 1,000 transactions a week in Elyria. Hours of operation are normally 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., sometimes 10:00 p.m. on Saturdays; and Sunday are either 10 a.m. to 6 or 7:00 p.m.; Christmas hours are usually 10:00 p.m. week days and 11:00 p.m. on weekends, but these hotars are usually dictated by the competition. Mr. Bingham stated that some of their stores do stay open 24 hours, but he has been advised that this store would not be a candidate for that, because this would be considered a neighborhood.type of locationo Mro Thomas questioned this because other retail experts consider North Olmsted to be a major regional retail area. Ldal-Ma.rt decides this based on various criteria, including location and population density. Mr. Thomas doubted this because of the size of the building, the planned expansion and the intensity wi.th which the developer has pursued this site. He believed that this is a ma,jor elevelopment which will have a regional impact on North Olmsted. He suggested that a neighborhood store would have more than 2 sidewalks, more buffering for the truck docks from the neighbors, and that the meeting last night would not have been so unsuccessful. Mr. Skoulis checked the traffic study figures of the rnmbers of cars on both Lorain Road and Dover Center Road and figured that with Rally's and ldal-N1art there would be about 64,400 cars a day at the intersection and pointed out that these figures clid not take into consideration the additional cars generated if the Super K-Mart was built in Westlake. Mr. Lepisto explained 25% of these cars would be passerby traffic (drivers already on the road who stopped at Wal-T1art), Rally's passerby traffic iqould be even higher perhaps 50 to 60% of the traffic. He further pointed out that the totals of cars on the two roads cannot be added since many on one road turn and are counted on the other as well. Mr. Orlowski believed that these figures, based on the Mentor store, would be vastly different in North 0]msted because of the population density of the West Shore area. Mr. Lepisto clarified these figures are not from the Mentor store that they are standards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers using criteria gathered from various shoppirg centers through out the country. They noted what the peak traffic hours were in North Olmsted and then checked the number of cars using the Mentor store during these hours. In this case they are using the 25% figure as a worst case scenario, normally it would be 30 to 40%. Also this rnimber of cars is spread over a 12 hour period, the problem times are the peak hours. If traffic can be handled during the pealc hours, the other hours would be no problema In response to Mr. Tallon's questions, Mr. Lepisto stated that during the peak hours on Friday there would be 400 cars coming out of the store, with 100 t»rn-ing right anto Lorain and 300 turning left, 25% of these would have been on the road anyway (passerby), and conpared to Great Northern Mall this is a moderate increase. Mr. Thomas noted that the traffic consultant had stated tYiat the saturation point of this roadway had been reached, and that this store will have a highly negative impact on the neighboring residents, and questioned what Wal-Ma.rt was going to do to help this problem. Mr. Newberry stated that they originally wanted access on Mil1 and Dover Center Road which would have distributed the traffic that would come to this facility, and they had offered to help «th improvements to Mill Road. The Comnission had not wanted access on these streets. Mr. Thomas stated that access onto Dover Center Road has not been eliminated. He questioned if the one million dollar estimate given by City Engineer Deichmann for the improvements needed to , 10