Court Upholds Zoning Board Rejection of Garfield Ave. Gas Station Plan

After a two-year legal battle and two zoning appeals, a Superior Court judge has upheld the Cranston Zoning Board's denial of a special use permit that would have paved the way for a Stop and Shop gas station on Garfield Avenue.

In a March 30 ruling, Judge Allen P. Rubine said the Zoning Board did not err by rejecting the proposal, which was filed by Garfield Avenue Development, which owns the busy shopping center near Route 10, and Stop and Shop Supermarket Company.

According to court records, Garfield planned to consolidate vacant and undeveloped lots to form a single 33,000 square foot lot make way for a Stop and Shop gas station.

A gas station is an approved use in the zone, an M-2 zone, with a special use permit.

Stop and Shop requested the permit in 2009. It recognized the lot was undersized and directly adjacent to Route 10. At a March 5 2009 Site Plan Review Committee Meeting, the city's acting deputy fire chief and traffic engineer both raised concerns about traffic speed, visibility and the frequency of accidents in the immediate vicinity.

The committee recommended preliminary approval of the proposal on condition the traffic issues were addressed and Stop and Shop worked with the police department and the state Department of Transportation.

The Zoning Board subsequently rejected the proposal, which was promptly appealed to Superior Court, where the decision was vacated based on the Zoning Board's "failure to state the evidence upon which it relied reaching its conclusions," according to court records. That was a win for Garfield and Stop and Shop. But it didn't last very long.

The Zoning Board met on Sept. 8 and went over the established record. Later that month, it issued another denial based on an expanded and refined set of reasons. Their denial was appealed once again along with a request for reimbursement of legal fees.

The property is adjacent to a residential neighborhood and neighbors circulated a petition with more than half of the residents in the area tacking on their signatures.

The court disagreed with the assertion from Garfield, which argued that the Zoning Board did not refute the experts brought in by Garfield who testified that a gas station would be a public convenience and serve the public's welfare.

Instead, the court said that Garfield's own lawyers showed traffic on Garfield Avenue would increase and that the board can shape its decision at least in part by public lamentation and commentary from "lay persons who testified that cars regularly travel at excessive speeds, and that the road is also congested on a regular basis."

"After reviewing the record, the Court concludes that the record supports the Board's conclusions," Rubine wrote in his decision. "Furthermore, given that it is undisputed that traffic volume would increase with the proposed use, coupled with the fact that there already exists traffic congestion, excessive speeds, and frequent accidents in the area, the Court cannot conclude that the Board erred in denying the special use permit."

The court also concluded that Garfield did not suffer a hardship by not getting the special use permit. In legal terms, the board is required to grant a special use permit if the applicant meets various conditions and if the applicant could not realize the full value and potential of the property without the variance or special use permit.

Garfield apparently already received a dimensional variance in the 1990s on two occasions to build a commercial building on the lot. They never moved forward with those plans. Consequently, the court ruled that "the fact that the Board previously had granted variances for the same property contradicts any claim of hardship accounting to more than a mere inconvenience."

The full decision is attached to this article.