Board approves shortened buffer and 8-foot wall to allow rail-spur access for Western Wholesale Supply

The board approved a variance allowing Western Wholesale Supply to reduce the landscape buffer along a parcel abutting residential properties so the company can extend a rail spur and unload center-beam rail cars.

Jake Bean, representing Venture Land Investments and Western Wholesale Supply, told the board the change is driven by operational limits: the site needs forklift access on both sides of center-beam rail cars and the existing buffer trees would block safe vehicle movement. "We're already proposing to more than double the same new sound wall" and to relocate required trees north of the improvement area, Bean said, arguing that staff's proposed 220-foot wall would be disproportionate and would extend into unrelated, leased yard space.

Staff recommended extending an 8-foot masonry or opaque wall 220 feet so the wall would pass the nearest residential structure. The staff report noted the city's standard buffer between industrial and residential uses is 30 feet (reducible to 20 feet with an 8-foot opaque wall) and said the applicant's plans remove about a 49–50-foot buffer segment in the immediate improvement zone.

Adjacent property owner William Keppler, who said he and his wife own the nearby parcels, told the board he worried about visual, audible and lighting nuisances and about mature trees, and said neighbors "prefer the longer version" to reduce impacts. Bean replied that Union Pacific serves the rail park twice weekly and that Western Wholesale Supply expects most activity during typical business hours, saying, "we're only open Monday through Friday from 07:30 to 5PM."

After discussion about alternative fence types, tree root impacts and where relocated trees would be sited (staff noted a city-owned strip near the River Walk was a likely relocation area), board members sought a compromise between the applicant's proposal and staff's recommendation. The board voted to approve the variance with the condition that an 8-foot opaque wall begin at the north edge of the construction area and extend south 144 feet 8 inches; the approved condition removed the requirement for a 30-foot landscape buffer in that stretch but retained a requirement for trees north of the construction area. The board asked staff to modify the written reason statement to reflect the adopted condition.

The decision allows the applicant to proceed with the constrained rail-spur design with the specified wall condition; the board recorded no appeals or additional conditions in the meeting minutes.