Brighton Supervisor Bill Moehle wants the developer behind the Whole Foods Plaza to scale back its plans.
During a press conference this afternoon, Moehle said that he’s directing the developer, Daniele Family Companies, to either eliminate a 6,300 square foot building from the plan, or cut out some equivalent amount of building space. He also said that he’s directing the company to sign on to an agreement not to put access points off of Allens Creek Road or Clover Street.Â
The Daniele Family Companies, which was founded by restaurateur Mario Daniele and is headed by his sons, Anthony and Danny, proposed constructing four buildings totaling more than 90,000 square feet on Monroe Avenue, next to I-590. One of the buildings would be a 55,000 square foot Whole Foods store.
Moehle’s push comes after a packed public hearing on the the project’s environmental statement. In order for the project to proceed, the town has to find that the project reasonably avoids or mitigates environmental impacts to the nearby areas. Many neighbors said they want a Whole Foods, but believe that the project as proposed is too big and would worsen traffic on an already troubled stretch of Monroe Avenue.
But Moehle also was careful to say that he believes the project — slightly downsized — will benefit Brighton. It’ll generate an additional $245,000 in property taxes a year, much of which would go to the Brighton school district, he said. The project also includes new traffic signals that would ease access into the plaza and into businesses on the opposite side of Monroe, and help traffic generally flow better, he said.
The final decision on the environmental statement, and ultimately the project, will come down to the Town Board. Moehle is just one voice on that board.
The Danieles have applied for incentive zoning, which would allow them to build a larger project than town zoning laws would otherwise allow. In return, they’d provide some other amenities — the incentives in the equation — to benefit the community.  The traffic signals are one, and some sidewalk improvements are another. During the press conference, Moehle mentioned that the developers pledge to improve a section of Auburn Trail.
Such arrangements are used widely in communities across the county and state.
“We’ve heard the comments, and we’re not going to ignore them,” Danny Daniele said.
The organization Save Monroe Avenue, which has opposed the project, issued a statement through its attorney, Aaron Saykin of Hodgson Russ’s Buffalo office, characterizing Moehle’s demands as inadequate. The group claims to represent some businesses who want to remain nameless for fear of repercussions; it hasn’t disclosed any members or funders.
“The town now admits what we’ve been saying all along — the supersized project is far too large
for the area,” Saykin’s statement says, in part. “But it still hasn’t solved the horrible traffic problem. The Town should require the developer to shrink the size of the project’s largest traffic generator, Whole Foods, and not some other tiny store. They should require a Whole Foods Market that resembles the 30,000 square-foot stores it’s currently opening nationwide, instead of a supersized 50,000 square-foot store that still requires a special zoning deal.”
![[UPDATED] Daniele blames Wegmans for Whole Foods delay](https://i0.wp.com/www.roccitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/news1-1-3acae9ed09db840c.webp?resize=800%2C600&ssl=1)
This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2018.
The whole real estate business is based on square footage, so to loose 6300 sq ft is quite a sacrifice. You have to wonder why government officials think they can throw regulations at companies and they can just absorb it (like the increasing min wage). Some how, some way the developer will have to raise the rent. Increased rent leads to higher prices. The customer pays more. And there will still be just as much traffic. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Let’s cut to the chase here. On the one side, you have Bill Moehle who is arguably the most left wing supervisor in Monroe County. On the other side you have Daniele Family Companies including Anthony Daniele, a Republican and onetime president of the Monroe County Legislature.
This is nothing more than a good old fashioned pissing match. Neither of these two – Moehle and Daniele – can stand the other. Moehle would love to get a rise out of Daniele and the reverse is probably just as true. Whole Foods is caught in the middle; if they had proposed this development in Victor, it would have been built by now, and would have been in business for a couple of years. But by not reading the political tea leaves correctly and not understanding what they got themselves into, Whole Foods has become a pawn in a political pissing match. All this talk about traffic is nonsense. It’s not traffic, folks, it’s politics.
If Whole Foods wants a store in the area, build one in Victor, Perinton, Penfield, or Webster. Forget about Brighton.
Nobody has been pointing out that peak grocery shopping hours do not coincide with rush hour congestion times. So, this Monroe Avenue bottleneck scare has been just that; a scare.
Whole Foods Plaza should be built, and perhaps one of the cheaper spin-off stores should be considered. 365 by Whole Foods Market would be a smarter, albeit less greed driven, choice. It would do better.
Amazon ownership of Whole Foods is probably something that keeps Wegmans executives up late into the night. Revolutionary changes to how we shop for food might be just around the corner. Hey, we all get that Wegmans has a flagship store to protect, but business is like war, and ultimately, you want to win the war.
Animule….seems to me Brighton’s supervisor is helping the Danieles by making suggestions to get the Whole Foids plaza approved.