Gas station with a view

Council considers gas station, donut and convenience store in Wellington

Council approved a site plan agreement for a gas station, convenience store and Tim Horton’s restaurant in Wellington at Tuesday night’s council meeting at Shire Hall.

The plan features a long-anticipated gas filling station. If approved and built, it will be the only retail gas pumps between Carrying Place and Picton—a welcome development for residents in the area, as well as many visitors who fail to notice their fuel level until well past Carrying Place.

It has been almost a decade since Wellington has had a gas station. Many folks in the village store fuel in their garage for those instances when absentmindedness or miscalculation has left them, or others, with a near-empty gas tank in Wellington. The most frequent questions left in the travel information kiosk on the western edge of the village is, “where is the closest gas station?”

While gas pumps can’t come soon enough for many, there is a bit more ambivalence, however, toward the development of a 2,350 square foot convenience store and a 1,450 square foot Tim Hortons store. Both will be housed in a single building with a peaked roof—in keeping with character of Main Street Wellington.

Specifically, a proposed drive-through with the prospect of vehicles queuing for the donut shop has some neighbours worried.

“We’re concerned about a drive-through next to our house,” says Shelley Durnin, whose home is located immediately to the west of the proposed development. “It is a residential community. The neighbours behind are going to have to deal with people ordering Tim Hortons in their back yard. With idling cars. With trash piled right up against the retaining wall.

“I think it changes the quaintness of our town, and what draws people here. Who thought it was a good idea to enable the development of a gas station with a view? I am afraid of what happens next.”

The site plan prescribes a 15.6-metre (about 51-foot) green buffer comprising grass, trees and shrubbery between an existing common walkway and the drivethrough lane.

The gas pumps and lighted canopy will be situated on the eastern side of the property.

Durnin says the neighbours have been left out of the process.

“We have been asking questions since before Christmas and given assurances we would be involved in the process, but that didn’t happen,” says Durnin. “We were told we could come in to Picton to look at the plans, but could not take them with us. We were told they were just proposed plans, and as such we weren’t allowed to ask any questions. Now things are happening, and we haven’t been able to ask our questions, let alone have them answered.”

Specifically, she wants to know if a traffic study was conducted. A light study? An impact study on the neighbourhood.

“I am more sensitive because it is right next door to my house,” says Durnin, “but I wouldn’t want this anywhere in Wellington. It changes the town for me.”