Truck stop proposal quashed by SF County Commission
Developers could appeal in state District Court
SANTA FE — If the fight over a proposed Pilot Flying J truck stop for Santa Fe is to continue, state court will be the next battleground.
The Santa Fe County Commission, after a nearly six-hour meeting that attracted a crowd of about 350, voted late Tuesday to reject the truck stop that developers want to build on the south side of Interstate 25 at the Cerrillos Road/N.M. 14 interchange.
They can appeal the ruling to state District Court. Representatives of the project did not respond to calls for comment Wednesday.
After hearing public comment from dozens of speakers, the commission spent an hour in a closed executive session before voting. The state’s Open Meetings Act allows closed-door deliberations over “administrative adjudicatory proceedings.”
The commission accepted a conceptual plan to develop the 26-acre parcel, but with a requirement that truck-stop portions of a 10-acre initial phase — also to include a gas station, convenience store and restaurants
— be removed.
Commissioner Ed Moreno cited a 75-space semi-truck parking area, a weigh station and semi-truck fueling stations as non-allowable uses under rules for the Community College District and the county’s Sustainable Growth Management Plan. The vote for the motions was 4-1, with Commissioner Robert Anaya casting the only no vote.
Speaking to Pilot Flying J and land owner Warren Thompson, commission Chair Anna Hansen said she hopes they decide to work with the community to create something “sustainable” at the interstate exit site.
Karl Sommer, local attorney for Pilot Flying J, said the conceptual plan met all county requirements and that approval of specific future uses wasn’t required at this point in the developers’ application.
He denounced the county Planning Commission’s unanimous decision in March to not recommend the conceptual plan’s approval. The commission ruled a truck stop isn’t “materially similar” to other allowable conditional uses under county code, rejecting opposite findings by county Land Use Administrator Penny Ellis-Green and case hearing officer Nancy Long. “The Planning Commission was simply trying to reach a result, a result of a recommendation of denial,” Sommer said.