City right to deny 7-11 permit for 12 gasoline pumps at May Street and San Marco

St. Augustine Planning and Zoning Director Mark Knight correctly denied a permit to a prospective franchisee wanting to build a 7-11 at the busy corner of May and San Marco. A 7-11 at that location which would adversely affect: (a) the Nelmar Terrace and Fullerwood neighborhoods (b) the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, (c) traffic to and from Vilano Beach, and (d) emergency evacuation.

The corner is very busy now and scene of many accidents. But 7-11 insists on too-wide driveways and too narrow turning radii, threatening more accidents with eighteen wheelers delivering gasoline. 7-11 has ignored correspondence from the City Manager and said that the City's legal requirements are "unfeasble." 7-11 is getting bad legal advice from the law firm of the late corrupter GEORGE MORRIS McCLURE, whose meeting with community leaders revealed that 7-11 had not done its homework and was insouciant to historic neighborhoods' preservation concerns.

Let 7-11 build elsewhere on a main road, as it has at St. Augustine Beach on Route A1A.

This foreign multinational corporation (7-11 Corporation is a Japanese corporation) can both "save face" and avoid litigation, by dropping the oyster and leaving the wharf. Otherwise, they will find the City of St. Augustine is empowered to resist deturction, having spent more than $100,000 to fight the Whetstone family demand to build a dock across from one of their motels on Avenida Menendez.

There is no principled reason to build an eyesore in our historic downtown. It violates our Entry Corridor Guidelines.
Japan does not want its contribution to St. Augustine's 450th to be an ugly gas station in our historic downtown.

St. Augustine was founded on September 8, 1565, with 800 settlers -- the lived with Native Americans for a year and shared with them America's first Thanksgiving and America'sfirst Catholic Mass. St. Augustine's 800 founders were the first Hispanic Americans, first Catholic Americans, first Jewish-Americans and first African Americans -- ify of them, both free and slave. When Jamestown and Plymouth were founded in 1607 and 1620, University of Florida History Prrofesser Michael Gannon says, "St. Augustine was already up for urban renewal."

Respectful Note to 7-11 and Japanese, American and Israeli businessmen: please respect our hometown and please: don't appeal the Planning and Zoning Director's determination that your 7-11 store would violate our rules, to wit, St. Augustine City Code Section 28-353 and Sections 3.1.3 and 3.3.9 of the Entry Corridor Design Standards.

The whole world is watching.