The agenda for the July 22 Traffic & Safety Commission meeting has been posted on the city website.  Also available is the staff report on the city’s Safeway Store major projects page (attachements referenced in the staff report are on the major projects page).

For vehicle circulation, Safeway proposes three options:

Option A:  Vehicle access for the underground parking garage well down Curtis and Neilson and across from residences (as per previous designs), no Solano access.  Truck access would be via a loading dock high up on Neilson.

Option B:  Vehicle access well down Curtis and Neilson, no Solano access.  Truck access would be via a loading dock located on Solano Ave.

Option B-1:  Truck access via a loading dock located on Solano.  There would also be a vehicle access ramp on Solano adjacent to the loading dock, however there would still be vehicle access on Curtis and Neilson and these access points would be south of the existing parking lot access cuts.

Unfortunately the city engineer has thrown his support behind proposal A, which makes it all the more important that we emphasize how detrimental this proposal is to the neighborhood.  Even option B-1 could use some improvement — the driveways on Curtis/Neilson need to either be removed, or moved north (towards Solano) to their existing locations.

There are two important meetings coming up, both of which will be held at City Hall.  The first is a hearing of the Traffic and Safety Commission on Thursday, July 22 at 7 p.m.  At the time of this post an agenda is not available on the City website, but we know the Safeway project will be discussed.  The purpose of this session is to “review auto and truck circulation plans” associated with the Safeway application.  To provide feedback, send an email to Aleida Andrino-Chavez at achavez@albanyca.org, copy Jeff Bond at jbond@albanyca.org.  As a reminder, please keep your emails on topic (i.e., the Traffic Commission should consider that primary access is being switched to a residential street and that the larger store will push major streets like Solano and Marin past capacity, but they don’t care that the building is annoyingly tall).

Second, the Planning and Zoning Commission will have Safeway on its agenda at its Tuesday, July 27 meeting at 7:30 p.m.

At the current development meetings, Safeway has made many promises — statements regarding their future behavior, and how they will be a good neighbor.  Shown below is a truck violating the Albany Municipal Code by deviating from the prescribed truck route and traveling down Marin Avenue.  If neighbors react with skepticism to Safeway’s assurances it’s because we can’t even convince them to follow city ordinances — let alone unwritten promises.

Safeway truck traveling down Marin Ave