Traffic routing poses challenges for Fred Meyer

PALMER -- Fred Meyer may be considering opening a Palmer store, but company officials have a few hurdles to clear before any land is cleared.

Tom Gibbons, site acquisition manager for Fred Meyer's Alaska, Washington and Utah locations, spoke to the Palmer City Council Monday to update council members on several issues currently facing the proposed development.

"We really think Palmer would be a great next move for us," Gibbons said. "[We're here to] point out what some of the hurdles are that we, as Fred Meyer, need to work out with the city and the state."

Gibbons told council members that Fred Meyer had been considering Palmer as a potential location for several years -- even before the Wasilla store was considered. While a market analysis showed Wasilla to be a better startup location, the company has not given up hope of opening in Palmer.

Setting a store in Palmer's dense downtown poses a few problems, Gibbons told the council as he displayed a preliminary site plan on a wall in the council chambers. The site plan shows the store situated with an entrance on the south side of the lot, facing toward Evergreen Avenue. Gibbons said Fred Meyer officials are working to secure access to Evergreen Avenue adjacent to Burger King.

"We're working with the state to see if we can get an access on the Glenn [Highway]," Gibbons said. "It would be really challenging for us to make this site work without getting relief [for traffic congestion] on the Glenn."

Gibbons and other Fred Meyer officials, along with staff from the city of Palmer, met with staff from the Department of Transportation Wednesday, and several of the issues that needed to be addressed were discussed at those meetings.

"We gave them some parameters to look at and they need to run some numbers," said Murph O'Brien, DOT's assistant to the director. "The big issue is the impact, not only on the Glenn Highway, but to Cobb Street and to Evergreen."

Mostly, O'Brien said, DOT's concerns centered around the intersection with Cobb Street and Evergreen Avenue and how traffic would be routed, how the intersection with Evergreen Avenue would function and how the added traffic load on Evergreen would function at the intersection with the Glenn Highway. Although DOT staff asked Fred Meyer developers to come back with traffic data and potential solutions, O'Brien said City of Palmer officials were asked to come up with long-range projections of what the city would need in terms of traffic corridors.

O'Brien said DOT asked Palmer officials where they most need additional connectors to the Glenn Highway, what cross-streets those connectors would hook to and what the city planned to do in the future to address growth and congestion.

At the Palmer City Council meeting Gibbons made a case for a right-in, right-out access off the Glenn Highway -- mirroring that of Carr's across the highway -- but O'Brien said the decision wasn't as simple as "you did it for them, why not us?"

"That area of the Glenn Highway is a controlled-access facility," O'Brien said. "We were able to break that access because of the overall traffic and safety problem … Eventually, the Glenn Highway is going to be four-laned. We have to remember what the function of the Glenn Highway is -- it's a part of the national highway system."

If access upon access are created along the Glenn Highway, it will make the future growth of the transportation corridor difficult. When the Glenn Highway route was changed from Alaska Street to its present location in 1968, O'Brien said, it was done in order to provide for future growth of the town. The town has now grown around the new corridor, and new transportation problems have arisen.

A second obstacle related to the right-in, right-out access to the Glenn Highway is that, as a member of the national highway system, it's federally regulated. Any changes must be approved by the U.S. DOT, which is not an easy process. O'Brien said the changes to the Carr's traffic flow were not easy to sell, and the driving motivator behind the changes was that the intersection of Darin Drive and the Palmer-Wasilla Highway had the highest accident rate of any intersection in the Valley.

Nevertheless, Fred Meyer officials told the Palmer Council they are willing to work to reach a compromise with state and local officials. Gibbons added this wasn't the first time Fred Meyer ran into obstacles when planning a new store. He cited the Wasilla store as a prime example.

"It was a very controversial traffic project and it seems to work pretty well now," Gibbons said.