Antioch Planning Commission to hear Autozone proposal Wednesday night

By Allen Payton

On Wednesday night, February 19, the Antioch Planning Commission will be addressing a proposal for an AutoZone auto parts store, at the corner of Fairside Drive and Lone Tree Way in the southeast part of the city.

This will be the third location in Antioch for the national chain.

City staff is recommending the Commission deny the application, after a year of efforts by the auto parts company to design plans and address concerns of parking, access to the parking lot and location of the store on the lot.

The challenges to the applicant are the lot is unusual and requires the store to be located on the corner, with no setbacks from the sidewalk, in order to ensure the driveways be as far away from the corner as possible, and that there enough parking spaces.

However, staff says they don’t like the lack of setbacks and are counting the entire square footage of the store as retail space, even though half of it is used as warehouse. The difference amounts to 16 parking spaces between the 39 city staff is requiring and the 23 AutoZone is offering, even though if only half the store is counted as retail space, there would only be 18 spaces needed.

After weeks of delays, debates and discussions between the applicant and city staff, the Planning Commission has been offered both a motion to approve, as well as a motion to deny, which is all the staff offered the Commission, for last month’s meeting. Becuase of that AutoZone’s consultant chose to postpone the hearing until this month.

The meeting begins at 6:30 PM in the City Council Chambers at 3rd and H Streets in downtown Antioch. The public will have the opportunity to speak to the Commission about the issue. For the complete meeting agenda, click here.

For more background, please see the Payton Perspective column from last month by clicking here.


4 Comments to “Antioch Planning Commission to hear Autozone proposal Wednesday night”

  1. karl says:

    the commission went with staff recommendation, and denied the project.

  2. skip says:

    It’s unbelievable how hostile Antioch is to businesses. It was bad enough that they put a sales tax on local transactions under the guise of needing money, but to learn that they have been styming a large employer who has already invested in our community twice, is outrageous. They claim poverty, but then turn away revenue over parking. Autozone must have forgotten to make their annual contributions to the council’s reelection campaign.

    • karl says:

      this meeting was kind of interesting.
      auto zone reps made their case, city staff made their case, ron bernal was NOT convincing at all, it was obvious that he made up his answers on the go. the committee members ask questions.
      it has to be said that auto zone has already 2 stores in antioch, and want to open a third store.
      the chamber of commerce lead, ask for an approval, because..jobs, sales tax increase etc. at one point the chair lady stated that this committee has to decide in regards to planing issues, and NOT economical issues.
      denial vote was a 4-1

      staff and committee was referring to the general plan. i wonder if anybody could have the idea, that the org. general plan was established many moons ago, and does not fit our needs anymore?

      we need to be business friendly. we just gave 15-25 jobs and sales tax money away.

  3. Joe says:

    It’s amazing that there is any business approved in Antioch.

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