Blaine looks to cut required distance between schools and gas stations

The Blaine City Council tonight is expected to approve an ordinance that reduces the minimum distance between gas stations and elementary schools.

In 1989, the council enacted a provision requiring a 1,000-foot setback between schools and new service stations selling gasoline. It was the result of several attempts to open a gas station across Polk Street from Johns-ville Elementary School in northern Blaine, which the council believed would pose a safety hazard to students.

Fast-forward 20 years.

The owner of a property at Cloud Drive NE. and Main Street has expressed an interest in making the land available for a gas station/convenience store. The site is one-tenth of a mile from the newly opened Northpoint Elementary School.

No formal application has been filed to put a gas station on the site, noted Blaine Community Development Director Bryan Schafer. But in an environment where many city councils want to encourage economic development, it seemed natural to rethink the need for a 1,000-foot setback requirement, Schafer said. The new requirement would be 400 feet.

In discussions beginning last spring, the council arrived at a consensus that 1,000 feet probably was excessive to address safety concerns, although it might make sense to preserve some setback requirement, for practical reasons, for schools that serve older, more mobile students who may be lured out of classes by the temptation to hang out at a nearby store.

"Everyone on the council is a parent," Schafer said. "It was probably just gut intuition combined with stories over the years."

In Circle Pines, gas stations are permitted by conditional-use permit, so case-by-case restrictions can apply. There is no gas station within 1,000 feet of a school, said City Administrator Jim Keinath. Neither Coon Rapids nor Shoreview have any similar rules on their books.

Nile Zikmund, chief of the cooperative Spring Lake Park-Blaine-Mounds View Fire Department, said he has no safety concerns about locating a gas station within 400 feet of an elementary school.

"In terms of gas stations exploding, that's all Hollywood," he said. "That just doesn't happen."

The perfect storm that creates an explosion rarely occurs, said Bob Benedetti, principal flammable liquids engineer at the Boston-based National Fire Protection Association.

"Yes, there are certain inherent hazards in handling motor fuels, dispensing them and delivering them to the storage tank," he said. "But one would have to conclude that the risk is fairly small when you consider the millions of transactions that occur on a daily basis in this country. You rarely hear of a service station having a fire, and even less do you hear of one where there's an actual explosion involved."