Monroeville council faces an unsavory choice when it comes to the Elmhurst Group's remodeling and expansion of a Jamison Lane property.
The Downtown developer has failed to meet council's requirement that it buy property for a dedicated right-turn lane onto Monroeville Boulevard.
Elmhurst spokesman Ray Hildreth has asked the municipality to condemn the property instead.
Refusing to do so could cost Monroeville about 600 high-paying jobs. Agreeing could chase other businesses away and open the municipality up to further condemnation requests or expensive lawsuits. Jamison Lane residents also contend Elmhurst's proposal will endanger their lives.
Hildreth's request has infuriated residents and Victor Liberatore, owner of the adjacent Tech One business park.
"Elmhurst is taking advantage of you," Liberatore told the council at its regular June 12 meeting.
Elmhurst bought the 145,000-square-foot Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad building for $5.2 million and plans to expand it to 179,000 square feet to house about 600 Bechtel employees. Bechtel plans to start moving people in this August, but the bulk of employees won't arrive until some time after August 2008.
The development eventually would put about 600 more cars on Jamison Lane, a residential street that usually handles about 40 vehicles. To mitigate the traffic increase, council ordered Elmhurst to either add the right-turn lane or find another route.
At the June 12 council meeting, Jamison Lane resident Diane Allison played a tape recording of the Nov. 14 meeting to show that both Hildreth and Monroeville's lawyer, Bruce Dice, agreed that if Elmhurst failed to meet the access requirement, it would abandon its expansion plans.
She pointed out that the council decided in November that the extra 600 cars wouldn't create a safety problem. While the residents think they will, the council can't change its finding now to justify condemning property that Elmhurst can't get through private negotiations, she said.
"Traffic issue then. Traffic issue now. You can't spin it around," Allison said.
The site sits behind Tech One, and Hildreth would prefer to bring the 600 cars across the business park's private road.
Liberatore prefers a back access road so the Bechtel traffic won't scare away prospective tenants for Tech One's empty 500,000 square feet of buildings.
The Buffalo, N.Y., businessman said Hildreth is not willing to discuss the issue. "There has been no negotiation," he said.
Hildreth said his company's traffic consultants have ruled out the back access road, but his company still is interested in the front road.
"We remain willing to discuss this and other reasonable access alternatives," he said.
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