Boycott Louisville’s New Conoco-7-Eleven
A new Conoco gasoline station and 7-Eleven convenience store are about to open in southeast Louisville along 96th Street just north of Dillon Road. Almost one and half years ago, the Louisville City Council approved their development as part of the Saint Louis Parish and Bolder Innovation Campus, a commercial development of United Properties on land primarily owned by the Saint Louis Parish of the Archdiocese of Denver. I call on my fellow Louisville citizens—and all residents of the Denver metropolitan region—to join me in boycotting Louisville's new Conoco-7-Eleven.
The arguments for boycotting this Conoco-7-Eleven are multiple. They are the same arguments that several Louisville citizens, myself included, advanced in opposition to this gasoline station’s development. Over the past year and a half, these arguments have only gained strength.
First and foremost, developing a gasoline station is wholly incompatible with the critically urgent need to mitigate climate change. The City of Louisville clearly recognizes this need. For instance, the City’s Comprehensive Plan states that “we value . . . sustainable practices for the economy, community, and the environment”, City Council adopted “a resolution setting clean energy and carbon emission reduction goals”, and the City developed a Sustainability Action Plan. Permitting the development of a gasoline station runs counter to the City’s commitments and goals enunciated in these documents. City Council should have instead followed the lead of Petaluma, California—and, subsequently, a handful of other municipalities—in banning the development of gasoline stations. Since City Council’s approval, the urgency—and the immediacy—of the climate crisis has materially heightened while the necessary mitigation efforts have further crystallized. Referencing the last year’s two most prominent climate reports, to keep global warming to a reasonable level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded in its Sixth Assessment that worldwide greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 and drop by half before 2030, and the International Energy Agency has advocated in its report Net Zero by 2050 for an immediate moratorium on investment in new fossil fuel supplies.
Second, the gasoline station and convenience store are inconsistent with the site's rural zoning designation. The City’s Comprehensive Plan states that “the 96th Street and Dillon Road Rural Special District serves as the rural gateway to the City of Louisville", its uses required to be “separated and buffered from the surroundings roads to maintain the appearance of a rural entryway”. The campus only retains some appearance of a rural entryway because its southern portion has yet to be developed, and the gasoline station and convenience store are not sufficiently separated and buffered from 96th Street. Furthermore, no other gasoline station or similar development exists on rurally zoned land in Louisville. City Council's approval of the gasoline station's development established an unfortunate precedent for rural development in Louisville. Indeed, despite further citizen opposition, City Council subsequently approved the development of a car wash next to the gasoline station (albeit in a split decision).
Third, the City's Transportation Master Plan does not identify a need for a gasoline station at this location. The City already hosts sufficient nearby gasoline stations: the gasoline station at the intersection of Front and Pine Streets is approximately one mile away; the two gasoline stations near the intersection of South Boulder Road and Highway 42 are approximately two miles away; and the gasoline station near the intersection of Dillon Road and McCaslin Boulevard is less than three miles away. Lafayette and Superior host comparably nearby gasoline stations.
Fourth, gasoline stations release so-called fugitive emissions through their pumps and storage tank vents, which include such chemicals as the carcinogen benzene and precursors of ground-level ozone. At the time of City Council’s approval, the Environmental Protection Agency classified our region as a serious nonattainment zone of its standards for ozone air pollution; subsequently, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to downgrade our region’s classification from serious to severe. Such a downgrading will trigger an additional suite of actions and regulations to further remediate our region’s air quality, including the requirement that gasoline stations sell specially formulated gasoline during the summer.
Fifth, the convenience store's offerings are incongruous with the commitments to and goals for local agriculture and food enunciated in the City’s Sustainability Action Plan. The convenience store also falls along a primary route to Monarch High School, providing our teenagers an outlet for unhealthy, packaged food. Moreover, 7-Eleven still sells a full line of tobacco products, and one in four 7-Elevens have been caught selling such products to minors.
Finally, as one citizen cogently summarized these arguments before City Council, the development of a gasoline station and convenience store conflicts with our community's values.
A few Louisville citizens spoke in favor of this gasoline station's development. One such citizen attested to its convenience for those driving into and out of southeast Louisville. While climate change may only be an inconvenience for many, at least for the moment, climate change is a crisis for many, most pertinently, those Louisville citizens who lost their homes to the Marshall fire. Although we cannot directly attribute the Marshall fire to climate change, we can be quite certain that climate change exacerbated this fire's destructiveness.
Another such citizen spoke to the dearth of places for employees at the Colorado Technology Center to purchase food. The Colorado Technology Center's lamentable zoning has resulted in such a dearth, but the convenience store is hardly convenient. Owing to the railroad, there are no direct transportation connections between the Colorado Technology Center and the Saint Louis Parish and Bolder Innovation Campus. (I advocated that the developer work with BNSF to establish a direct crossing.) To access the convenience store, one must travel the perimeter of both developments, a distance comparable to that to downtown. This citizen also argued that the largely undeveloped plot was then an eyesore, implying that development would remedy its unsightliness. I would not contend that this piece of land was one of Louisville's most picturesque, but now the City welcomes us from the southeast with a highway rest stop.
The Louisville City Council unanimously approved this development almost unconditionally, only insisting that the gasoline station host one electric vehicle charging station. (At the time 7-Eleven had no plans to install electric vehicle infrastructure; subsequently, 7-Eleven's corporate leaders decided to install electric vehicle charging stations at many of its locations.) I was extremely disappointed but not entirely surprised: much of the above argumentation did not legally bear on the development application. Did City Council have a legal recourse to reject this gasoline station's development? I maintain that City Council did possess such legal grounds: the special review use granted for the gasoline station required that this development be “consistent in all respects with the spirit and intent of the Comprehensive Plan”. I argued above that this gasoline station’s development fails to respect the Comprehensive Plan’s “spirit and intent”, but, of course, the Comprehensive Plan’s “spirit and intent” are open to interpretation.
Unwilling to concede defeat, I contacted Father Timothy Hjelstrom, the Saint Louis Parish's pastor, requesting that his parish reconsider this gasoline station's development. After recounting the above arguments, I cited Pope Francis' teachings on climate change, notably his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’. In this letter Pope Francis endorses the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline, is the primary driver of climate change, challenges us to “protect our common home” by bringing “the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development”, and decries the lack of “leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations”. Subsequently, Pope Francis has called on all Catholic institutions and individuals to divest from fossil fuel investments.
Having received no reply after a few weeks, I contacted Archbishop Samuel Aquila and Reverend Randy Dollins, requesting that they reconsider this gasoline station's development. To date none of these men, whose names appear on the development documents filed with the City of Louisville, has extended me the courtesy of a reply.
I do not know the Saint Louis Parish's motives in developing a gasoline station, but I can only presume that this gasoline station—and the entire campus—is a real estate investment. The Saint Louis Parish has every right to make real estate investments; I only wish that the Saint Louis Parish would pursue projects consonant with its community's values and our planet's needs. The Saint Louis Parish may very well enjoy short-term profits from this gasoline station, but the rapid adoption of electric vehicles will soon render this gasoline station obsolete, and then this gasoline station's useless hulk will needlessly mar Louisville's rural landscape. Investing in a gasoline station at this moment in time—when we must act decisively to mitigate climate change within the decade—verges on greed.
I implore you: uphold our community’s values and safeguard our planet’s future by boycotting Louisville’s new Conoco-7-Eleven.
