By: Taylor Christensen | Royal Oak Review | Published June 16, 2025
ROYAL OAK — The conditional rezoning and site plan for a Sheetz located at 3200 W. 14 Mile Road was brought before the City Commission on June 9. The plan passed with a unanimous vote.
Sheetz is an automobile filling station that includes a convenience store, restaurant with drive-thru and outdoor cafe. The developer of the property is Broder Sachse Real Estate.
The entire property is currently zoned as general industrial and was most recently occupied by a metal fabrication facility. The area would need to be rezoned to general business to allow for the gas station and a car wash to be built there.
According to the City Commission meeting agenda, the commission was not required to hold a public hearing on the rezoning application, and it chose not to. However, the Planning Commission held a public hearing on the matter at a Feb. 13 meeting.
During public comment at the beginning of the June 9 City Commission meeting, members of the community voiced their opinions on the plan.
Some residents said that the City Commission does not listen to residents’ concerns and no matter what residents said during public comment, the council would not side with the public.
“I’ve been to two previous meetings and the thing that really bums me out the most is the fact that you (the commission) have driven the majority of the people that have filled these rooms out,” resident Mike Grant said. “They don’t bother coming back anymore because this is a set deal. There is no way you guys have any inclination of listening to what we really say. You don’t care anymore.”
“I live three quarters of a mile from Woodward Avenue, and every single night I can hear people racing up and down Woodward. That is going to happen on 14 Mile if you put a Sheetz there, because they are not going to be respectful of anybody that lives in that area,” Nancy Sumner said. “You guys (the commission) have to start thinking about the residents and not making money for your own pockets.”
Mayor Michael Fournier addressed that the City Commission does not have the say on what businesses propose a site plan.
“I want to make sure people understand the legislative and judicial aspect of the Planning Commission and how an applicant, in this case through a real estate developer, comes to a planning commission with an application to do something,” Fournier said. “We are not choosing or saying, ‘Hey, developers, do this,’ or ‘Hey, bring a gas station’ or whatever things come to us.”
Steve Robinson, of Broder Sachs Real Estate, spoke directly to the City Commission about the plan’s background. He said that it was difficult to figure out what would work in that spot.
“The choices here were to try and redevelop this site or repair this building, at which point we would have a 70,000-square-foot industrial property at this location,” Robinson said. “We looked at it, and we said, ‘What is the best use for this property?’ My first inclination was, ‘I don’t live too far from this intersection, and we know this is a difficult stretch of road.’”
Robinson said that his team engaged a traffic consultant to do a study.
“We knew critically that we had to make this a functioning intersection in order to develop anything here,” he said. “Based on that traffic study, we started to look at potential uses for the property. … We wanted to develop something that would simply take traffic or substantially take traffic that’s on that road today and bring it into our site and put them back on their merry way, and that’s why we thought a gas station would be the best use and the least impactful for this location.”
Robinson went on to say that the petitioners spoke with multiple different convenience retailers and service station owners throughout southeast Michigan.
“We decided to go with Sheetz. One of the reasons we went with Sheetz is because they just have a great product. I’m not going to advocate for Sheetz one way or another, but they have a great product, they are a wonderful family-owned company to work with and we have enjoyed the experience despite some of the opposition that has come from many of the communities,” he said.
Traffic is by far one of the major issues brought up by the public and the commissioners. The traffic was evaluated by the petitioners’ engineers — Fleis & Vandenbrink — and Hubbel, Roth & Clark, which according to City Commissioner Sharlan Douglas is employed by the city of Royal Oak.
Changes to that intersection, which were in the agenda packet, included an upgrade to the traffic signal at 14 Mile and Coolidge Highway, installing a left turn lane for eastbound 14 Mile Road to the northbound east site driveway, and a widening of 14 Mile Road.
“We have committed all costs associated with not only the expansion of the lanes, the acceleration and deceleration lanes, which we have added on per request of the traffic consultants, we have modified some of the geometrics of the intersection based on their comments, and all of those improvements will be paid for by us,” Robinson said.
Commissioner Melanie Macey asked City Engineer Holly Donoghue to clarify approximately how much these improvements might cost, and how the city can be sure the petitioner is going to pay for them.
“This is probably going to be a full upgrade, where all those signals go away and we have new poles and new underground conduit, so we are anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 in cost to do an intersection like this,” Donoghue said. “So we did make that point before the meeting and he (the petitioner) was like, ‘Yes, I know,’ so I think we are on the same page with that.”
The city of Royal Oak will have final approval of the design of these improvements.
During discussion following the motion, Douglas spoke in favor of the project.
“This is a challenging property, and I think the applicant gave us a very clear picture of what some of the options were for this property,” she said. “I have heard from all sides of the issue that people in this room are vocally opposed to this, but if you look at social media, there are plenty of people who love this provider, the Sheetz; there are people who visit their establishment elsewhere and who want this business to serve their needs.”
Commissioner Monica Hunt also spoke in favor of the Sheetz development, saying that her biggest concern is the traffic, but she hoped that whatever went into that space would come with an opportunity to make that area safer for drivers.
“It’s adding value to our city. Following this process all along and hearing the issues with regards to crime and safety, that’s not really an issue in any of our other gas stations here. I think prior to COVID many of our gas stations were open 24 hours; that’s not the case anymore, so it’s really nice to have a 24-hour place to go to get gas and convenience goods,” Hunt said. “I walked in (to the meeting) on the fence and I appreciate the fact that many of these changes to many of the concerns by the engineer and our staff have been remedied.”
Commissioner Brandon Kolo said that construction projects will not begin for quite a while. The petitioners must now go back to their architect to get construction drawings and submit them for approval. They also must draw up a new road configuration and get that approved by the Engineering Division.
While that is going on, the petitioner must start the environmental cleanup. Once all of this is done, they can start building. Kolo said he wouldn’t be surprised if construction started sometime next year.