Plan panel will review Target store expansion

Concerned about too few parking spaces

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

By RON JENSEN

The Register-Mail

GALESBURG - The Galesburg Plan Commission tabled Tuesday night a site review of a proposed Target store expansion on Carl Sandburg Drive pending the results of a parking analysis and a traffic study.

Commission members were told the city's parking ordinance would require 647 parking spaces after nearly 40,000 square feet is added to the existing building. The current plan created by Target would have only 378 parking spaces.

Roy Parkin, director of community development for the city, said the commission can cut by 50 percent the required parking, which would put the Target plan within acceptable limits.

"One of the things that we have requested is documentation that they don't need all 647 spaces," Parkin told the commission members. "We really want to have a hard look at that."

Also, he said, with the store increasing from about 90,000 square feet to nearly 130,000, there is an anticipated increase in traffic. The retail giant has been asked to do a traffic study, also.

The proposed expansion would extend the store slightly to the east, but mostly to the south, toward Carl Sandburg Drive.

Scott Debell of Woolpert Inc., the civil engineering firm from Oak Brook Terrace drawing up the expansion plans, said Target has an internal formula for parking needs based on store size and sales volume.

"Using that formula, they came up with a demand for 359 spaces," he told the commission.

The expanded store would actually have a net loss of 89 parking spaces from what it has now as current spaces will be eaten up by the new construction.

Debell said Target expects an increase in customer traffic, but not proportional to the increase in building size.

Steve Apsey, commission chairman, noted that the city cannot worry only about Target's needs.

"We're talking about a facility that may not be Target (forever)," he said.

Apsey and other commissioners expressed some concern, too, about Target's plan to move the store's main entrance south toward Carl Sandburg Drive. Already, they noted, the foot traffic from Sandburg Mall across the street to Target is substantial.

"Moving the entrance closer to Carl Sandburg Drive is inviting more people to walk across the street," said Apsey. "I'm concerned for the safety of our citizens."

Commissioner Richard Vandemark wondered if Target could move the entrance farther from the street, lessening the impulse to walk from the mall to Target.

Debell said, "That's something I can take back to Target."

Before voting, commissioner Gary Mitchell cautioned his colleagues, saying he was glad to see an existing business in Galesburg decide to expand rather than relocate.

"I don't believe we ought to nitpick them quite to death," he said.

In other business, the commission heard Parkin update an item from last month's meeting. The commission in March voted to waive the requirement for a sidewalk on the south side of Kiwanis Park for an imminent development. Parkin told the commission the City Council had concerns and requested a study on the cost to build a sidewalk where the land now slopes steeply from the street.

"We're in the process of developing cost estimates," he told the commission.