Median Pauses Sturgeon Bay’s West-side Kwik Trip
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The Sturgeon Bay Common Council spent the majority of its two-hour meeting Feb. 21 considering whether to allow a new Kwik Trip – one that’s being planned on the city’s west side – to have a driveway connecting with Highway 42/57. Council members held off making a decision and agreed with a suggestion from Mayor David Ward to delay a vote until their March 7 meeting.
Prior to the next council meeting, Ward said he would get together with council president Dan Williams, city administrator Josh VanLieshout and community development director Marty Olejniczak to come up with some possible solutions, then consult with Kwik Trip and the existing businesses near the project.
The city’s Aesthetic Design and Site Plan Review Board referred the matter to the council after the board deadlocked Feb. 13 on two motions: one with a driveway on Highway 42/57 and one without.
The designed project includes three entrances/exits, with the other two also having two-way traffic located along Duluth Avenue (County S).
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 be subject to review by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT), which regulates highway access in the state.
WisDOT informed the city that if Kwik Trip had driveway access to the highway, 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.
David Nielsen, WisDOT Northeast Region access-management engineer, said in an email to city staff that to increase safety and efficient travel, “their guidance would be to not have the functional area of the intersection overlap with the functional area of the left-turn lane (median opening).”
Representatives of businesses that currently exist along both sides of that stretch of Highway 42/57 appeared at the Feb. 21 council meeting to express their objections to closing the median due to negative access impacts.
Dana Anderson of Sturgeon Bay Metal Products said the median would prohibit northbound trucks from turning left, and also affect trucks that leave to go to the Industrial Park.
“I certainly understand and support Kwik Trip’s desire for this access driveway, and I do also understand and support the DOT’s decision for the raised median,” she said. “However, we are not in favor of the substantial impact this will have on our driveway access.”
Anderson asked the city to “find a reasonable solution to this dilemma” of having to redirect traffic without safe turnarounds available on the main highway.
“Kwik Trip’s desire to increase business should not create burdens for the existing businesses that have been there, like us and Valley Cabinet, Floor Mart and Verlo,” she said. “The longstanding businesses together made this community into a place that a Kwik Trip or a Fleet Farm wants to come to.”
Troy Mleziva, director of real estate for Kwik Trip, said the company believes it has a “good location with a good plan” for a store on the city’s west side after opening one last fall on the east side along Egg Harbor Road.
“Unfortunately, it seems DOT’s response is [that] their long-term plan was to have that median closed,” he said. “Unfortunately, it seems like we’re getting stuck between our fellow businesses in the area and that decision that, according to what I’ve heard from them, they had a study done [in] 2010 that planned to close that median.”
An email to city staff from Randy Asman, WisDOT Northeast Region traffic supervisor, stated that the median “will likely be raised in the future” – even if the Kwik Trip development doesn’t take place – if an increased crash trend is identified, if a redevelopment between Ashland and Duluth Avenues includes 50-100 peak-hour trips, or if WisDOT reconstructs the highway in the location.
Asman further stated that WisDOT provides median openings only at specific public-street locations – not individual or private access points – and the roughly 1,500 feet between the Ashland and Duluth intersections would not be enough distance to allow another public-street connection.
Ward said the city is “stuck between a rock and a hard place,” given the restrictions that WisDOT could put in place along that section of Highway 42/57.
“The DOT is saying that Kwik Trip has to pay for the median,” he said. “We would be looking to help in any solution to getting sort of that truck-traffic thing straightened out.”
Besides the effect Kwik Trip could have on the amount of traffic on County S where the other two driveways would be located, Williams said he expects an increase in traffic just south of the intersection of Highway 42/57 and Duluth Avenue (County S) after Starbucks opens this year in the three-unit commercial building that’s now under construction. That building will also house an AT&T retail store and a Door County Medical Center clinic.
“I’ve traveled quite a bit over the state, and every Starbucks I’ve gone by has got a line [of vehicles] all the way around the building,” Williams said.
