check one two captions test one two testing one testing to test one two
three to check one two three accept the consent calendar second
Commissioner Anderson yes Commissioner count yes mr. strongman yes
Commissioner Kwok yes vice chair klaw yes chair needing this is set up I can't
find my button. Pardon me. So there are two opportunities to provide public
comments. The first is during the item of the agenda as it pertains to the agenda
and the second is if the comment is not of the agenda but within the purview of
the Planning Commission. So are there any public communications? I'm going to say
know and any ex parte communications. Lots of no's. So now I'm gonna go ahead
and open up the public item for the public hearing portion which is Chevron
Concurrent Sales of Gas and Alcohol CUP application Y 2619 located at 2895
North Main Street and it looks like we have a presentation from staff. Yes good
Good evening planning commissioners.
My name is Gerardo Victoria,
associate planner of community development.
The project before you today is the Chevron extra mile
concurrent sales of gasoline and alcohol
at 2895 North Main Street, application Y26019.
Some site context.
The existing service station is located here
where the yellow is supposed to be a star,
so I apologize for that yellow star is located.
The existing convenience market is just to the left of it.
It is located off North Main Street and Gary Road,
surrounded by a mix of commercial uses.
Eating and drinking establishments,
you see the Burger King directly to the south.
And a little bit further south, you have the Chick-fil-A.
There's also the Volvo dealership and the senior housing
community located to the west right there.
The general plan designation is service commercial.
The zoning designation is service commercial.
Service stations with concurrent sales of gasoline
and alcohol all permitted with approval
of a conditional use permit.
One quick thing, there is an amended agenda report.
Sunnyvale Avenue located right here
on page five of the agenda.
I noted it was Buena Vista Avenue,
so I apologize for that.
So that's been amended to say Sunnyvale Avenue
as there is a church located over here.
As you can see, the would be star.
This is where the Chevron is located.
So this is the business plan for the service station
for the Chevron extra mile.
They have 300 extra mile stores in California,
about 140 of those sell alcohol.
This is a type 21 license for offsite consumption.
The previous license was a type 20 for beer and wine only.
The type 21 is for distilled spirits.
They are open for 24 hours daily.
They have a layout of restrooms, a snack area,
and a beer and wine area.
Security measures that Chevron has is they employ
two to four employees per shift.
Their alcohol display area is approximately 39 square feet.
They will lock their alcohol between the hours
of two a.m. and six a.m. daily.
They do have signage all over the site
that says no loitering, no open containers.
They do have 12 to 15 security cameras on site,
and they stored a surveillance video for up to 30 days
and all of their employees undergo ABC training.
So this is the existing floor plan, as you can see here.
This is the entrance and this is the wine rack,
the beer sales, the snack area, and the recharge station
with the restrooms located in the back there.
So just a bit of history.
The Board of Zoning Adjustment in 1968
issued a use permit to Standard Oil for the service station,
and this is the floor plan back then
where they have a freshman area and a sales area.
The use permit was issued in 1968,
but not for gasoline or alcohol sales.
These are the standard conditional use permit findings
for the project as outlined in the draft resolution
with the additional findings
also outlined in the draft resolution. So staff moves to adopts the secret determination and
approve the conditional use permit based on the findings outlined in the draft resolution to allow
the concurrent sales of gasoline and alcohol at the Chevron at 2895 North Main Street.
Staff is available for questions. The applicant, Mr. Steve Rawlings, is also available to answer
any questions. Thank you so much. Are there any questions for staff? It was one
note and you did confirm it in here is that when I was reading the staff report
is the fact that they had been selling previously beer. Correct. And wine. I just
didn't realize there was a 20 in a 21. Correct. Okay so if there's no more
questions for staff then I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing. Hi good
evening everybody my name is Steve Rawlings I'm I'm here on behalf of
Chevron stations Inc. For the record we do concur with the staff's
recommendation and do agree to all of the draft conditions of approval that
are presented to you this evening. I wanted to emphasize just a couple things
this is a corporate-owned store it's been a corporate-owned store and many
Any chevrons that you see up and down the state are franchisees, but the corporate Chevron
Station Inc., a little more than 300 stores in California that they own and operate, and
they take great pride in the – and oftentimes they own the real estate with it as well.
So they take great pride in the maintenance of it, and this store has been – you know,
we haven't had any issues at this particular store, and we'd just like the opportunity
to be able to add to the product line.
So with that I'm available for any questions anybody might have.
Perfect.
Does anybody have questions for the applicant?
Oh, yes.
Hi.
Great.
Thank you for being here today.
I was curious to know, looking over the business plan as well as the conditions of approval,
so in the business plan it had mentioned the because the sales will the sales will be prohibited
or cease from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. in the morning.
Correct.
But in the, what page was it, the coolers would lock, okay, on the page, what page is
this?
One, two, three, four.
Okay, the top of page four says any coolers containing alcoholic beverages will automatically
lock at 12 a.m. and unlock at 6 a.m. daily.
So is that the current practice or is it to adjust to 2 a.m.?
It would be adjusted to 2 a.m. That may have been a typo on our part there, and they are just an automatic locking thing
It's on a timer it locks
You can't manually override it and then at 6 a.m. They'll they'll unlock just an extra measure also on the point of sale system
If you try to scan an alcoholic product after you know 2 a.m.. It won't allow you to you know complete the transaction
So they kind of use a you know to a method to make sure that we're not continuing to sell after 2 a.m
Okay, and then the other question is in the Bay Area would you know this how
many Chevron extra miles have type 21 licenses already? I knew you were gonna
ask that and I was trying to go through my head. Okay, I know I've done them in
trying to think of Brentwood. I know we have one there. I know a couple others in
Contra Costa County. I believe that the store in Livermore might have it and I
I knew you're going to ask and I apologize. I'm not. I do know that we're approaching about 20
over 20 stores in
California that have them because San Rafael. I think we have one
anyway, I
I'm at a loss, but this is not the first time we've you know done this up in the greater Bay Area
It's a trend that is being followed by
AMPM as well and then some other lesser-known companies. United Pacific, which operates
a series of stores called Rocket Convenience Stores, who happen to have like 400 stores
in the state of California. They're following suit. The Loop Neighborhood Markets, which
is based here in the Bay Area, they are also, they have about 160 stores and they're following
suit with trying to add a little bit of a product line. So I'm staying pretty busy.
So then this would this one would be the first one for Walnut Creek as far as Chevron's are yes. Okay. Got it
All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate the explanations
Just
thinking about the safety of the neighborhood and you know access to alcohol and I noticed that
Your business plan has is talking about the mostly the ready to drink the RTV drinks
which are approximately the same alcohol level as like a beer or wine right but
you are also gonna have the distilled stronger alcoholic beverages in a locked
cabinet behind behind the cashier okay and it is a two foot by two foot you
know cabinet so it's not this huge you know liquor display or anything like
that and we do inventory that but again it's it's in the back of the store but
as I mentioned, the driver on this are those ready to drinks.
It's the one alcoholic product line that is actually growing in popularity.
I don't know if you've read the articles about Napa Valley and
the closures and the bankruptcies.
There's less demand for it and even in the beer space.
We've seen a lot of craft breweries close now too.
So, and obviously that's affecting retailers.
You know, I've known some of my convenience store clients, they used to have say four
cooler doors with beer in it and they've been cutting those back.
It's like, well, there's no sense of inventory that will put more monster energy drinks or,
you know, whatever else in there.
So they're inventorying.
So the, you know, request is that, hey, there is a product line that is continuing to be
popular.
And it's not like we're adding a bunch of square footage.
Literally going to take some beer out and some wine out and just replace it with this
particular product because it seems to be popular and the most
popular of those brands are not much different than what you're
going to find in beer and as we know wine has an alcohol by
volume that's pretty, you know, can be 14, 15 and we're already
selling that product but these ready to drinks are in that same
general age.
The popular ones are.
Thank you.
Any other?
Oh, yes.
I just want to thank you for a very detailed business plan
which was really helpful in understanding your operation and also for the years of
Performance where the police say no problem. So good job. Thank you very much. Well, we appreciate that
We pride ourselves on that. So good to hear
Vice chair co-op stole what I was gonna say
Because it was when I my husband and I both read it and I was like wow, I even had the photos
Cuz I was like what is it ready to do?
Yeah, you're not used to hearing that term, but you know
You know, we all became familiar with White Claws.
You know, they got real popular about 10 years ago.
And they were made malt-based, which is kind of a beer-based
or wine-based.
And you can sell that with a Type 20 license.
ABC, though, says, ah, you got a little ingredient
called Distilled Spirits.
Hence, therefore, you need this Type 21.
And there was a bill that went through,
trying to change that, saying, hey,
if we measure by alcohol by volume,
But the state legislator shot it down.
And so that's why we're having to request the type 21.
And the type 21s are expensive.
They cost us money.
We have to actually purchase them.
Whereas a beer and wine license, you can just go down to ABC
and pay your $2,000 and you can get one here.
You've got to go actually onto the open market.
And this county is not particularly expensive.
But you go into a place like Sonoma County.
and they're $250,000.
So some people ask me, well, how come every Chevron
doesn't have this yet?
And I'm like, well, because we're
located in San Joaquin County, I think it's $175,000.
So obviously, there is a return on investment.
And certainly, I don't think anybody's
been able to justify $250,000 to be able to add this product.
But if you can get it in a certain range,
then you can make some economic sense out of it.
More than you wanted to know,
but useless trivia at a cocktail party.
Yeah, to me, that was the same thing I saw.
I was like, police, the fact the training,
the locked, if you're under 30,
and then the mystery shopper could come.
I thought that was pretty cool too.
And when I saw that the police said
there's been nothing here and they even gave those.
So anything else for our applicant?
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you.
I receive no public speaker cards so I don't think there's any more so with that I'm going
to close the public hearing and now bring it to the Commission for discussions, questions
and or a motion.
Does the motion have to include language about CEQA or is it just buried in the resolution?
Does not okay so then okay great so then I would like to move approval of draft of the
draft resolution for concurrent sales of gasoline
and alcohol at the Chevron station,
conditional use permit application number Y2619
at 2895 North Main Street.
Second.
Okay, Commissioner Anderson?
Yes.
Commissioner Cown?
Yes.
Commissioner Strongman?
Yes.
Commissioner Kwok?
Yes.
Vice Chair Klaw?
Yes.
Chair Neeting?
Yes.
And the motion passes.
The motion passes.
and now any items five and six,
any considerations or announcements from folks,
staff, commission?
Oh yes, Commissioner Gail.
I just had a brief comment.
I was able to attend the Habitat for Humanity Build Weekend
and was just so impressed.
And so I wanna say thank you to our city staff
and city council who've collaborated so well
with this fabulous nonprofit organization
to bring a really wonderful project to our city.
Wow, I love that.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Any?
Nope, okay.
With that, we adjourn.
Thank you so much.