Plantation council denies RaceTrac conditional use for Pine Island and Sunrise after months of debate

Plantation City Council on Wednesday night denied a request to add a 24‑hour RaceTrac gasoline filling station and a 6,008‑square‑foot convenience market at 1790 North Pine Island Road, at the southeast corner of Pine Island Road and Sunrise Boulevard. The vote followed a lengthy presentation by city staff, detailed testimony from the applicant’s engineering, traffic, acoustical and planning experts, and more than two dozen public comments, mostly opposed.

Planning staff recommended denial, saying the auto‑oriented use would be out of step with the evolving Sunrise Boulevard corridor and could undermine the city’s longer‑term transit‑oriented goals. “We did not feel that the applicant met the conditional‑use criteria,” Planning Director Dan Holmes said, highlighting compatibility with planned street‑level, mixed‑use redevelopment and county transit plans as central concerns.

City staff’s analysis noted that the B7Q planned commercial district that covers the site was designed to limit higher‑intensity commercial uses and to protect nearby residential areas. Holmes told the council that the Sunrise corridor is seeing new higher‑density, mixed‑use projects, and that adding an “auto‑centric” gas and convenience use at the corner would conflict with that direction.

The applicant, represented by attorney Jan Alota and a team of technical consultants, said the intersection and the surrounding market warrant a new convenience station. Racetrack’s representatives described a corporate‑owned prototype: an 8‑pump canopy with a 6,008‑square‑foot market, new landscaping, and roof screening for mechanical equipment. “We believe the evidence…