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City council denies Planet Fitness traffic-impact-fee appeal, refers TIF program review to committee
Summary
The Bakersfield City Council voted to deny Planet Fitness’s appeal of a transportation impact fee for a new location at Stockdale Highway and Buena Vista Road but referred a review of how the city calculates traffic impact fees for shopping centers to the Housing & Community Development Committee.
The Bakersfield City Council on Aug. 27 denied an appeal by Planet Fitness challenging the city's transportation impact fee for a proposed 25,257-square-foot gym at the southwest corner of Stockdale Highway and Buena Vista Road, saying the company's building is part of a larger shopping center. Councilmembers approved the denial while directing staff to send a review of the city's traffic impact fee (TIF) methodology to the Housing & Community Development Committee for further study.
City staff argued the Planet Fitness building should be assessed as part of the Village at River Oaks Centre shopping center because it shares points of access, utilities and common parking with adjacent parcels. "The appeal by Planet Fitness is they're challenging the current traffic impact fee, which is being imposed on their building," Public Works Director Zach Meyer told the council during the hearing. Meyer said the city's calculation uses three variables: building size, average daily trips (ADT) per 1,000 square feet, and a fee rate adopted by resolution.
Meyer described how staff and the developer's engineer updated ADT estimates as the center's size changed during planning. "Using these numbers, the square footage of the building is 25,257, ADT of 67.52, and using the fee per the adopted resolution of a $167, we're landing at a traffic impact fee of $284,793," Meyer said. Staff earlier presented a higher ADT estimate that would have yielded roughly $340,000 in fees before agreeing to a lower ADT requested by the applicant.
Representing Planet Fitness, Russell Johnson of Common Sense Consulting said the company believes the city is applying the TIF ordinance inconsistently and that gym uses are being treated more heavily than comparable uses under the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) guidance the city cites. "The appellant's argument is that the fee is being misapplied because they're not treating the uses as they should be in the manual," Johnson told the council, and asked the council to refer the matter to a policy committee for review.
Councilmember Coman moved to deny the appeal while simultaneously referring the broader TIF questions to committee. Councilmember Smith and others said the denial should stand for this development but supported a committee review of how the city applies and updates its TIF program. City Manager Clegg and the city attorney told the council that substantive changes to the TIF approach could require updates to the city's nexus study and the adopted fee schedule.
After discussion, the council voted to deny the appeal; the motion passed with Councilmember Arias voting no and Councilmember Gonzalez absent. The council directed that the review include an overview of how TIFs are calculated, the status of any TIF program updates, and whether alternative assessment methods exist for shopping centers.
The council's action leaves the fee as calculated for this Planet Fitness project in place; staff and the applicant will participate in the forthcoming committee review that could recommend policy or code changes affecting future projects.
