A second Starbucks location is in the works but many people, including the developers, are concerned about the traffic the coffee hotspot will cause near a busy intersection along Northern Pike.
Council approved of the coffee behemoth’s plans in a 5-1 vote Tuesday night. Councilman Bob Williams cast the lone dissenting vote and Councilman Tom Wilson was absent.
Williams said he does not think council should approve the site’s plans without it first getting proper approvals that will attempt to solve traffic woes there. The councilman even tried to delay the vote at one point during the meeting for this reason but his motion failed.
Council said its approval of the site plans is contingent upon the owners securing a highway occupancy permit from PennDOT. The permit is required because of the site’s proximity to the intersection with a state-owned road, Route 48 — also known as Mosside Boulevard.
Starbucks is planning to build a 2,000-square-foot building in a repaved parking lot on 4301 Northern Pike, the same address of the former McGinnis Sisters. Developers are still searching for a tenant to occupy the grocery store that has sat vacant since McGinnis moved out in 2018.
Jon Kamin, an attorney for the development and an owner of the property, said he hopes a Starbucks on the site will attract “Class A” tenants for the former grocery store. He said the owners, listed on the Allegheny County real estate website as 4301 Northern Pike Partners LLC, have turned away several interested tenants since taking ownership.
The site was purchased for $1.7 million in April 2019. Since then, Kamin said, the owners have spent around $1 million in renovations, including rebuilding a retaining wall, fixing mine subsidence on the site, replacing the building’s roof and façade and repaving the parking lot.
The repaving work included closing off an entrance to the site to better control traffic coming in and out of it, which, Kamin said, has improved the traffic situation there.
Plans for the Starbucks development first came to council in January. They were delayed because of back-and-forth talks with PennDOT, Kamin said.
“It is not the easiest of intersections for us to deal with,” he said.
Kamin said the owners would like to get approval from PennDOT and Monroeville traffic engineers to get a left-turn designated lane along Northern Pike into the site.
He also said left turns out of the site would be restricted from 4 to 6 p.m.
Darren Myer, a traffic engineer representing Monroeville, said the site is likely the safest it has ever been with the new traffic pattern created by having only one entrance. But he still has concerns because the Mosside Boulevard and Northern Pike intersection is already at its limit.
Myer said a left-turn lane along Northern Pike going into the site could back up into the intersection. He said he is still awaiting a PennDOT analysis on that plan.
Monroeville police Chief Doug Cole said the intersection has caused problems in the past, but nothing too serious. He said traffic engineers are correct when they say there were virtually no crashes there in the past.
“But there have been minor crashes there,” he said, adding minor crashes that don’t involve injury do not get reported to PennDOT. If a crash does not result in calling a tow service or an ambulance, the crash is not reported to the state agency.
He said the crashes typically occur near the “Northern Pike Spur,” which is a road that runs parallel to Mosside Boulevard that drivers use to bypass making a right turn onto Northern Pike at the intersection. The one-way road, which is named Haymaker Road, restricts left turns.
“We’ve tried enforcing that left turn there, but we can’t. And that’s where you get crashes, is people making a left turn out of the Northern Pike Spur,” Cole said.
Cole said he is “all for” development in Monroeville. But the site’s traffic woes are real. He said good traffic engineering, not police work, will solve the site’s traffic woes.
Residents had mixed feelings about the development.
Robert Serafini, who lives off Northern Pike, said he thinks building a Starbucks there is a bad idea.
“That traffic there was bad when (McGinnis Sisters) was there and it’s going to be even worse because this is going to be in-and-out traffic all day,” he said.
Dan Gerhart, a Monroeville resident, said he is in favor of the development.
“Yes, the traffic probably will be difficult. But, where in this world anymore is traffic not difficult? We always adjust and adapt,” he said.
Dillon Carr is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Dillon at 412-871-2325, dcarr@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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