Sheetz, a popular gas station and convenience store chain, has hit a roadblock in its plans to expand in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Despite the company’s ambitions to open a new 24-hour location at 12 Mile and Middlebelt roads, the Farmington Hills City Council unanimously rejected the proposal after a lengthy meeting that concluded shortly before 1 am. The decision was spurred by strong community pushback against the gas station’s development, as CBS News Detroit reported.
Packing the council chambers to express their disapproval, residents raised concerns over the gas station’s size and potential impact on the neighborhood. “I think the gas station is too big. It’s a truck stop and it needs to be up north where our rural Michiganders can have some economic development and jobs there. It’s just too big for 12 Mile and Middlebelt,” resident Pea Gee stated, as per CBS News Detroit, worried about the scale of the project and its suitability for the area.
The proposed Sheetz would have been one of two considered for the city. Yet, it required council approval due to current zoning restrictions on the location that had previously housed Ginopolis Bar-B-Q Smokehouse. Layered on this, residents like Allan Whittemore, president of the nearby Forestbrook-Pebblebrook homeowners association, argued that the proposed location was not optimal for nighttime activity, as he posited in a statement detailed by The Detroit News, “We do not want a night time eatery to be available to encourage people to be wandering around our residential neighborhoods in the middle of the night.”…