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Published on 04/13/1998 All articles from this issue

Planning commission denies use permit for gas station at Grant and Fremont

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

Even though the city planning staff recommended approval, the Los Altos Planning Commissioners unanimously denied a use permit for an existing gas station located in south Los Altos.

After the Thursday night planning commission meeting, Los Altos Senior Planner Jim Mackenzie said that in the years he has been with Los Altos, he'd never known an existing use permit to be denied.

The owner has 15 days to appeal.

The former Altos Oaks Union Service Station, now called Gas-N-Save, is on the corner of Grant Road and Fremont Avenue next to the city-owned Marymeade Park. The station, built in 1966, has been operating under a non-conforming use permit that expired in 1994.

"The non conforming use was permitted way beyond what it should have been," said planning commissioner Richard Abdalah.

The existing service station is non conforming because it was legally constructed but does not conform with the current zoning or general plan land use, Mackenzie said in a staff report.

"The whole idea is to allow for amortization," Abdalah said, so an owner will not suffer economic hardship if a zoning is changed. "The city has been fair and allowed him more than 30 years to use the property. Clearly he has gotten the business life he could expect."

Neighbors thought that when the owner retired or sold the business, the station would perhaps revert to the PCF zoning - for public and community facilities - that the city designated for that corner in its general plan in 1987.

Instead, the business was sold and the new owners began sprucing up the station. Neighbors notified the city and the city informed the new owners that they needed a use permit.

At the planning commission meeting, Rick Hirsch, who represented the new owners, a Los Altos-based limited partnership called Skyline 21, said they bought the station last October for $875,000. Since then they have put another $400,000 into the business to "bring it up to modern standards," Hirsch said.

"Then I got the letter about the problem with the use permit. We purchased in good faith," Hirsch said. Now the new owners have a 20-year lease with the seller on which the buyers owe $10,000 per month. "It would be an economic hardship" if the permit was denied, Hirsch said.

Neighbors from Estate Drive, including former 49ers coach George Seifert, spoke, sent letters or signed petitions against renewal of the permit. Many said they bought their homes in 1987 when the street was built and were told that the station, when its permit expired, would revert to the new zoning.

"This is not an appropriate use of the land," said Fritz Liepertz, a spokesman for the neighbors. "The buyer either bought anyway," knowing of the expired permit, "or the seller didn't disclose. Either way, the neighbors shouldn't be punished."

When the original owner applied for a permit in 1966, the land was not in the city and the county granted the permit for the gas station. Soon after Los Altos annexed the corner and fought to stop the station and zoned the surrounding area residential.

The station became non conforming with an 8-year permit.

In 1973 the city leased the land for Marymeade park from the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries. The nuns stipulated that the station be allowed to stay in business another 20 years.

When the city bought Marymeade in 1979, the purchase agreement gave the station another 15 years. In 1987 the zoning of the station was changed to public and community facilities.

And in 1994, the permit that began with the county and received extensions for 30 years, expired.

"Los Altos is not a 'Gas-N-Save' community," said Estate Drive resident Simon Wong.