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Updated 12 hours ago
Getting gas on the eastern edge of Greensburg may get easier with a proposed Speedway station off Route 30, but getting an oil change may be a little tougher.
The Hempfield Township Planning Commission recommended approval Wednesday for a gas station and convenience store that would replace the former CarQuest Auto Parts on East Pittsburgh Street and a neighboring building occupied by a cigar store and a flooring store. Construction of the station would take away an informal cut-through that allows customers from the Ace Quick Lube and Enterprise Rent-a-Car to get to and from the traffic light at Triangle Drive.
“We'd obviously like to keep traffic out of the congestion of Route 30, but we can't require them to provide a cross-easement,” said Dan Schmitt, consulting engineer for the township.
The site, adjacent to Hillview Lanes and across from Primanti Bros., is at the complex intersection of East Pittsburgh Street and Route 30. Without an easement, Quick Lube and Enterprise customers would have to turn in from the westbound-only lanes coming off Route 30 or use a narrow extension of Toll House Lane that splits off the eastbound lanes and requires them to cut across westbound traffic. Speedway customers will primarily use the traffic light at Triangle Drive, but will also have a right-in, right-out entrance east of there.
Commission chairman Bill Utzman, who recused himself from voting because his engineering firm, Morris Knowles and Associates, was consulting for Ohio-based Speedway on the project, said there were no formal agreements on record that gave the properties to the east permission to come through the future gas station, though there was such an easement for neighbors to the west.
Given that customers would be pulling in and out of the 10 double-sided gas pumps proposed for the front of the property, Speedway preferred not to have traffic from Enterprise or Quick Lube cutting through there, Utzman said.
Schmitt said Quick Lube could bring a civil court case to maintain access through the proposed Speedway if the business owners could show they've had an unofficial easement through that property for at least 21 years.
The Hempfield Board of Supervisors could vote on the plan, which is awaiting some permits related to its traffic and environmental effects, later this month, Utzman said.
Chris Barson, construction project manager for Speedway, said construction might not begin until early 2018.
The store would be Speedway's second in Hempfield, after opening a long-delayed location on the site of a former Kings Family Restaurant at the intersection of Route 119 and Willow Crossing Road in late 2015. The Kings site sat vacant for more than a year before Speedway got its construction permits in the summer of 2015.
The chain has expanded to more than 20 stores in the greater Pittsburgh area but struggled to win approval for another Westmoreland County location on Route 30 in Unity.
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