Council to Debate Kwik Trip Highway Access

After two deadlocked decisions Monday, Sturgeon Bay’s Aesthetic Design and Site Plan Review Board passed a motion to have the city’s Common Council decide whether to allow a new Kwik Trip that’s being planned on the city’s west side to have a driveway connecting with Highway 42/57.

Last December, the board approved the project’s building and site design, but it included a condition that the entrance/exit along Highway 42/57 would need to come back before the board if the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) required a change to that driveway or a raised median on the highway in that area due to the Kwik Trip.

Community development director Marty Olejniczak said WisDOT informed the city that the median would need to be raised from the existing end of the median at Duluth Avenue to the raised median at Ashland Avenue, eliminating the two-way left-turn lane that currently exists for that stretch of the highway.

Representatives of Sturgeon Bay Metal Products, which is located on the other side of the highway from where the Kwik Trip would be built, objected to adding a raised median, which would prevent trucks from turning left into the business.  

The project as designed includes three entrances/exits, with the other two also having two-way traffic located along Duluth Avenue (County S).

The board has the discretion to make a final decision on site plans before it, unless its ruling is appealed to the council by one of the affected parties. But the board’s two motions to approve the project – one with a driveway on Highway 42/57 and the other without – deadlocked on 2-2 votes, with three board members absent.

It was then that the board referred the matter to the council, where it could have ended up anyway had one of the affected parties appealed one of the motions, had it passed.