By Teri Carnicelli

    Neighbors who objected to the addition of new liquor sales and a noisy car wash near their quiet residential area at 7th Avenue and Bethany Home Road were victorious last month, thanks to the support of the city of Phoenix’s Board of Adjustment.

    John Ashfar’s dream of upgrading his 1950s Chevron service station to include a modern convenience store and drive-through car wash were quashed at an appeal hearing before the board on Oct. 1. The city’s zoning administrator approved Ashfar’s request for landscape and other setbacks on Aug. 27, but denied the use permit that would have allowed Ashfar to place a driveway for the car wash into an adjacent property to the south, which is zoned R-5 residential.

 

The zoning administrator also approved a use permit to allow alcohol sales. Ashfar had pledged to community members that his convenience store would only sell higher end packaged liquor sales, no “singles” like the Circle K store kitty-corner from his property. However, the neighbors adamantly opposed additional liquor sales in the area, and filed an appeal with the Board of Adjustment.

    Detective Chris Wilson from the Phoenix Police Department’s Liquor Enforcement detail testified at the appeal hearing as to the criminal element that exists in the neighborhood already because of liquor sales. He said the Phoenix Police Department was opposed to any additional sale of alcohol in the area. In addition, representatives from the four neighborhoods near the intersection—Vallombrosa, Rancho Solano, Sun View and Rose Ridge—also asked that the use permit for alcohol sales be denied.

    As a result, the remaining use permits and variance requests, including the liquor sales, were overturned at the Board of Adjustment hearing, leaving Ashfar with an essentially dead redevelopment plan.

    Azi Naseri, Ashfar’s wife and co-manager of the Chevron station, said that when they purchased the property in 2000 they signed an agreement with Chevron that they would improve the property, originally built in 1959. Residents said they weren’t opposed to improvements on the property, but they didn’t want a car wash or liquor sales, which the property owners have contended are necessary to meet the payments of the loan that they would need in order to make the improvements.

    In the end, the neighbors’ concerns about noise, traffic and safety swayed the five members of the Board of Adjustment panel, although one member, Alex Tauber, broke from his fellow board members and opposed denying the landscape and building setbacks, pointing out he could not see what harm those could cause the neighborhood.

    Naseri says they have submitted the results of the hearing to Chevron corporate and are waiting to hear back in terms of what happens next. She is naturally disappointed in the outcome of the hearing, pointing out that, “We are on a very small piece of land. This is not a big commercial lot. There is little we can do to improve this property unless [the city] allows some exceptions.”

    Calls to Chevron representative Phil Schanberger, who represented the station owners at earlier community meetings, went unreturned as of press time.