Truck stop rejected; other development OK’d
After hours of comments, commissioners approved hotels, fast food and other uses, but no weigh station or semitruck parking
After almost six hours of public testimony and discussion Tuesday night, Santa Fe County commissioners rejected a controversial Pilot Flying J truck stop that had been proposed for a lot off the interstate south of city limits.
Commissioners, following an hour of deliberation behind closed doors that ended around 11 p.m., spliced the proposed truck stop “use” out of a larger conceptual plan for a 10-acre parcel at the intersection of Interstate 25 and N.M. 14.
By then, many of the hundreds of project opponents who had filled the bleachers of the Santa Fe High School gymnasium for the hearing had gone home.
In three separate 4-1 votes, commissioners approved the conceptual plan for the lot — which includes proposed hotels, a convenience store, fast-food restaurants and other “light industrial” uses — but disapproved pieces of the proposal that would have made up the Pilot Flying J truck stop and travel center: 75 proposed parking spaces for semitrailer trucks, the semitrailer truck weigh station and the truck fueling station.
“These uses are not allowable land uses within the [Community College District Economic Center] and … they are inconsistent with the [Santa Fe County Growth Management Plan] and [Community College District] plan,” said Commissioner Ed Moreno, reading one of the motions that had been hashed out in the commissioners’ closed-door executive session.
“This move will give us an opportunity to kind of reset some things and get clear on what the next steps are,” Moreno added.
Commissioner Robert Anaya was the lone vote against each of the three motions. The trucking industry was “painted in a bad light today,” Anaya said. “At local level, at the national level, there are good people who are truckers.”
The next steps for the intensely contentious proposal were not immediately clear. Ross Shaver, a Pilot Flying J project manager, and Karl Sommer, an attorney representing the truck stop applicants, declined to comment after the vote.
A spokeswoman for Tennesseebased Pilot Flying J this week said the company would not comment on its plans.
County Attorney Bruce Frederick said the applicants could appeal the county decision to state District Court. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.
The proposal for the Pilot Flying J complex had drawn overwhelming community opposition at every phase of the county’s lengthy landuse application process.
Fittingly, the final and most consequential hurdle for the conceptual plan drew the largest crowd of opponents yet.
A hearing held at Santa Fe High’s Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium attracted more than 340 city, county and area residents. Dozens testified against the plan, and more than 2,100 petitions against the proposed development were submitted by antitruck stop organizers. Opponents charge the Pilot Flying J would be a noisy, dangerous and dirty intrusion into not only their backyards but also the so-called “gateway” to Santa Fe and the northern entrance of the scenic Turquoise Trail byway.
Developers countered that the proposal meets the requirements of county code and is not the prospective traffic and general safety nightmare opponents have made it out to be.
“These applicants have filed everything required by your laws,” said Sommer, who represents the local property owner as well as Pilot Flying J. “As a matter of law, they are entitled to approval.”
County land-use staff and a neutral hearing officer agreed, finding that a truck stop is “materially similar” to a gas station, a “conditional use” for which a developer may submit an application in the county’s Community College District.
The county Planning Commission, meanwhile, in March rejected that interpretation, siding with opponents who vigorously dispute that a truck stop, with its various accoutrements, can be defined as a gas station.
“The code doesn’t say truck stop,” said Matthew McQueen, an attorney representing many project opponents. “A truck stop’s not a gas station.”
Sommer called the Planning Commission’s conclusion “illogical and absurd,” saying the elements of the truck stop plan are accommodated by the 1989 Rancho Viejo master plan, the 2001 Community College District Plan and the county’s Sustainable Land Development Code, established in 2016.
“It demonstrates the Planning Commission was trying to reach a result,” Sommer said. “It was improper and not in conformance with the law or express language of the code.”
Some opponents, who grew feisty and began to heckle Sommer as Tuesday night wore on, cited the gray area of the county code and its defined uses and urged commissioners to install a moratorium on truck stop developments until a clearer planning process can be defined.
Resident Janet McVicker, expressing her opposition to what she said was the developers’ effort to exploit the code, quoted Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch: “Vague laws invite arbitrary power.”