By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff Writer
While the City of Burlington Plan Commission may have raised some concerns about how traffic will flow in and out of the new business, the commission ultimately approved the site plan submitted for an O’Reilly Auto Parts store.
The store will be located at 824 Milwaukee Avenue, the former site of the city’s Department of Public Works building.
The site has been in transition now for more than two years. An initial plan to sell the land to Craig Faust as a temporary storage site for what is now Quad Graphics was first stalled and finally withdrawn when some aldermen thought the plan didn’t prove transparent enough.
The dilapidated DPW building was eventually torn down as the new combined Department of Public Works building opened on South Pine Street, and the land divided into different lots. The current front lot of the property – Lot One – will accommodate the O’Reilly store.
The site plan is for a 7,453-square-foot store, with entrances and exits onto Maryland Avenue.
The setup of the store and the parking lot is similar to that of Advance Auto Parts farther north on Milwaukee Avenue, but some commission members were uncomfortable with the fact that the parking lot exits onto Maryland Avenue – a street where traffic can back up easily.
Specifically, commission member John Lynch felt that the distance from the exit to Milwaukee Avenue would allow only one or two cars onto Maryland Avenue – and traffic would back up from there.
Other options were considered – including putting up a “right turn only” sign or setting up two-lane “in” and two-lane “out” spots – but the commission finally decided to approve the plan as it was presented.
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