COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Whole Foods Market studies seem dubious

The Planning Board's October 2006 4-1 vote to deny a variance for a Whole Foods Market at the intersection of Main Street and Alameda Avenue came after the developer preferred a "no" vote from the board to providing the additional traffic studies.

Since then the city has issued a revised traffic study and Mitigated Negative Declaration that still do not address the most important questions ("Market plans are changed," Jan. 6).

The developer's report was revised to include a traffic count from Whole Foods markets in Glendale, Pasadena and Santa Monica. But these counts were taken on Dec. 20. According to the Food Marketing Institute website, Wednesdays are the slowest shopping day of the week. Therefore, the revised report contains the lowest possible numbers and cannot be relied on to judge the real impact of the project.

The real impact of this development can be judged by the experience of other California cities. The city of San Rafael conducted a traffic count at an existing Whole Foods in reviewing a request for a 3,700-square-foot expansion.

That showed Whole Foods generated three-times more a.m. peak trips, and two times more p.m. peak-hour trips than predicted by the same data Burbank is relying on. The city engineer's study found that noon-hour trip generation was higher than either the a.m. or p.m. trips. On the basis of this study, the San Rafael City Council rejected the request.

In Santa Monica, the neighbors of the only Whole Foods Market in the area with an underground garage petitioned their City Council for additional parking restrictions because patrons don't park in the garage. There is no garage study. A recent traffic study of another Burbank project confirms the obvious problem with subterranean parking — as the garage fills, "Patrons and visitors cannot find the last parking space available and begin to backtrack to look for available spaces they have either passed or that have opened while they were searching."

With only two entrances to the garage, all cars turning in will be competing for the single inbound lane, a completely unworkable design. Look at the Empire Center, Costco and the lot that serves the In-N-Out Burger — good circulation analyses has not been the city's strong point. Without the circulation study, nearby residents and schools will be paying the price of the unworkable garage layout.

Finally, if the precedent for reduced setbacks is established by the council, the implication for other Burbank neighborhoods is clear. Every applicant for a new oversized single-family home could argue that because the neighboring houses were grandfathered under the old rules, the new home development should also get a hardship exception. This is of particular concern because the city is revising its land-use plan, and our neighborhoods have a right to have their master plans enforced and not eroded.

The developer purchased this property with full knowledge of the requirements of the Rancho Master Plan. Any hardship he now claims is purely self imposed and it is not the job of the city to save an out-of-town developer from his own mistakes, and certainly not when the price of that mistake would be paid by residents and taxpayers.