Another sultry day in Apex

Another sultry summer day in Apex

106 degrees at 12:30
7/23/2011

Apex votes down jobs - new business rejected in Beaver Creek Commons

Apex Town Council has struck once again and cast votes against allowing a new McDonald's restaurant to be built in Beaver Creek Commons.

This means the Town Council voted down new jobs, new tax revenue and is preventing a new food business from opening in the Beaver Creek Commons shopping center. The sole reason cited was that the McDonald's would bring too many vehicles to the already heavily congested street leading to the restaurants and stores.

This also means the Town Council has blocked creation of badly needed construction jobs and 30-40 long term jobs for employees when the site opens for business. And the Town is declining a healthy addition to the tax base during an already depressed local economy.

It is interesting that the current traffic problem in the shopping center is a direct outcome from the traffic plan approved by the Town Council when Beaver Creek was built just a short time ago. The Council and Town Planners claim they study traffic patterns and impact of new construction but they missed the mark significantly on this shopping center. Convoluted road patterns and lack of alternate routes to stores and shops in the center have led to a nightmare for customers of the many stores packed into the space with insufficient access to and from shops. Council also approved the existing traffic pattern that allows a great amount of residential traffic to flow through the shopping center to homes and apartments located directly behind the stores.

There are solutions to the traffic issues, but they will be difficult to implement now that the shopping center has been opened. Adding alternate streets behind and around the congested areas could allow traffic to flow in a circular pattern and eliminate most of the left turn issues now plaguing the area.  Routing residential traffic for homes behind the shopping center to other streets would have a major impact in reducing the volume now experienced in front of the stores.

As for the proposed McDonald's restaurant, Council should allow the site to be built. There is no factual evidence that shows that the traffic would increase by 1100 vehicles as suggested in the third party study. It is very likely some of the traffic to the new business would come from the existing volume. As for the traffic level at Chick-Fil-A, that parking lot is already so crowded it is unsafe to navigate in the lot many times and this has nothing to do with whether the street traffic increases or not. This issue comes from poor planning on traffic flow inside the Chick-Fil-A property. Read more about voting down a new McDonald's...