LAWTON, Okla_It's not
getting as much hype as Target, but there is another supermarket coming to
town. It's called Aldi Food Market and there's a plot of land waiting for it on
Sheridan across
from Wal-Mart. The developer is waiting on a 'thumbs-up' from the city, but there
has been a bit of a hold up. Some city officials feel the proposed turning lane
to enter the store off Sheridan
is too short.
The length of
the turning lane was brought up in last week's council meeting. Some councilmen
feel the peak traffic hours would overwhelm the proposed turn lane. City
engineers are taking a second look to see if there's any room to grow.
"What's
designed right now is about a 120 foot turn bay storage, that's where all the
cars will wait as they wait to turn left, and then it has about 120 foot of
transition. It's actually a fairly standard turn bay in the City of Lawton, kind of a minimum
requirement," Lawton Community Services Director Richard Rogalski
said.
Councilman Doug
Wells was one of the strongest critics to the plan at last week's meetings.
He's concerned that a minimum sized lane won't be able to accommodate that kind
of traffic.
"The
question is why not make it a little longer? Well, in this case the median is a
little restrained by another entrance that is from northbound traffic turning
left into the shopping center north of Wal-Mart. So, the transition on this
particular turn bay runs right into the transition on the next one. They've
made it as long as they can with out reducing the storage to that northern
bound movement."
City engineers
said they would revisit the issue by conducting an impact analysis which just
means studying the area.
"You know
the square footage of your store, you know the traffic out, the number of cars
on Sheridan Road.
We have traffic counts that tell us what our peak hours would be. And you
basically decide how many trips there will be in the peak hour."
There will be
no ground breaking until council and the engineers can come to an agreement on
the length of the turn lane. However, Rogalski said he's not anticipating the
traffic engineers to change anything. He said it's exactly the same size of the
northbound turn lane into Wal-Mart which, he's assuming will see far more
traffic than the Aldi Food Market.
Rogalski said he expects council to revisit and vote on the issue in the
next few weeks.
