Retailers like Fred Meyer can now build fueling stations in Maple Valley.

The Maple Valley City Council approved an ordinance at its March 26 meeting that permits a retail fueling station as long as it fits certain conditions. It must be located 150 feet away from a major arterial if there are more than eight fueling points and the station must also have a minimum of four electrical charing stations if there are more than eight gas fueling points.

The amendments also re-designate existing gas stations as conforming uses. Previously, only the Chevron fueling station located on Kent-Kangley road was a conforming use, according to the city’s Community Development Director Ty Peterson.

In December 2010 Peter Powell, president of Bellevue-based Powell Development, the company building the new Fred Meyer at Four Corners, wrote a letter to City Manager David Johnston in which he requested a change in the city code to allow a fueling station on the property.

“To be competitive, Fred Meyer feels that having a fuel center is an absolute imperative,” Powell wrote in the letter.

Peterson said that about half of the proposal Powell submitted to the city was integrated into the zoning amendment.

The other half was generated from recommendations made by the Planning Commission and public input.

One major change the Planning Commission suggested was that anyone — retail or not — be allowed to build a fueling station, rather than only a developer as part of a big box store project.

“Powell’s proposal was not something we could really implement,” Peterson said. “They wanted to use a variance, and we said, ‘Well, we’re not going to do that. If we’re going to allow it we’re going to allow it (for everyone) and develop a site criteria.’”

Gas station owners like Eric Van Ruff, however, have opposed allowing Fred Meyer to build a fueling station, stating that it will make it very difficult for stand-alone stations to compete, and bringing existing stations into compliance isn’t much of a compromise.

VanRuff has owned the Chevron gas station and Wilderness Auto Service since 2005, located next to the Maple Valley Highway near Southeast 237th Street.

Van Ruff explained that when the city was incorporated the code it used then made all fueling stations nonconforming. Only after a large retailer, such as Safeway, expressed interest in building a fueling station did the city consider changing the code.

“It’s frustrating to know when the city was incorporated, they didn’t want any more service stations in the city,” he said. “But when the big box store comes to Maple Valley, ‘Oh, we’d like to have fuel,’ Maple Valley bends over backwards. They’re willing to change things for them.”

Van Ruff also said that while the compliance allows him to expand his station if he wishes, he’d rather remain nonconforming than allow Fred Meyer to build a fueling station.