Planning Board: Costco Gas Station Does Not Fit with Wheaton Master Plan

Costco should not be able to build a gas station at its new Wheaton location, county planners said Thursday night.

In a 3-2 vote, after nearly six hours of reviewing a planning staff report and hearing testimony that at times became emotional, the Montgomery County Planning Board recommended denial of Costco's special exception application for the 16-pump gas station.

The case next goes to a hearing examiner, who will take up Costco's application at 9:30 a.m. on March 11, 15, 18, and 22 in the Stella B. Werner Council Office Building, Second Floor Davidson Memorial Hearing Room, at 100 Maryland Ave. in Rockville.

The Costco store is scheduled to open April 10 at Westfield Wheaton.

Why the Planning Board Voted 'No'

The Planning Board came to the same conclusion as planning staff—but for different reasons.

Two board members, Norman Dreyfuss and Amy Presley, voted to recommend approval of the gas station. However, the board members in the majority—Chair Françoise Carrier, Casey Anderson and Marye Wells-Harley—reasoned that the gas station would not fit with Wheaton's master plan, which encourages smart growth, transit-oriented development and the protection of a green buffer area between the mall and adjacent neighborhoods.

"I think it was bad enough to put the Costco there, but that was the County Council's decision to go ahead with that," Anderson said.

Only two commissioners, Carrier and Wells-Harley, found grounds for denial based on environmental and health concerns.

In contrast, the staff report stated that Costco's "analyses and assertion of no adverse health impacts is based on insufficient information, and may have understated the exposure of the adjacent population to some of the toxics."

Costco "has failed to meet the burden of proof to demonstrate that the proposed use will not adversely impact the health of the residents, and visitors within the neighborhood as required," planning staff wrote in the report. (Read the full report here.)

Transit-Oriented Development in Wheaton

To support his argument against the gas station, Anderson cited the county's zoning code on special exceptions for automobile filling stations.

According to Sec. 59-G-2.06 (a)(3), one of the conditions for permitting a special exception for a gas station is if "the use at the proposed location will not adversely affect nor retard the logical development of the general neighborhood or of the industrial or commercial zone in which the station is proposed, considering service required, population, character, density, and number of similar uses."

The Wheaton Sector Plan, a significant document for guiding development that the Montgomery County Council approved in November 2011, emphasizes the importance of the Wheaton Metro Station and transit-oriented development.

The Costco gas station, which would dispense an estimated 12 million gallons of gas annually, would draw substantial automobile traffic to Wheaton.

For more background on the Costco gas station, read the topics page on Wheaton Patch.

The sector plan recognizes Westfield Wheaton as a regional shopping mall that will not—at least in the short term—be redeveloped for mixed-use or integrated into the Wheaton urban core, Anderson said. 

But while planners cannot force the mall to conform to a smart growth plan for Wheaton, they can try to prevent the mall from taking "a step backwards," Anderson said.

"I think that the gas station is fundamentally inconsistent with the direction that the master plan takes for the area," he said.

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