By Camas Frank
A stoplight currently being installed on Tank Farm Road near the Broad Street intersection will make it easier for the employees at Mindbody Inc. to get into the parking garage at their brand new headquarters.
That is just as soon as they finish building it. The light, a little less than a block from the nearest cross street, will stop traffic to allow turns in and out of the office complex attached to the fitness-software firm.
In the future, said City of SLO Transportation Manager, Jake Hudson, the light will also guard an intersection, with a private road to be connected from Tank Farm to the SESLOC Credit Union building up at Broad and Industrial Way.
“It will be like the private roads at Costco or in the Madonna Shopping Center,” he explained. “It’s a similar concept for all of the developments, with ease of access to the nearby offices and to the bank, all of the neighbors to Mindbody.”
That connecting road, which would also lead to the City-owned Damien Garcia Field, where there is another light at Industrial Way, doesn’t have a timeline for completion.
“It’s up to the property owner’s discretion, if and when,” said Hudson, adding that the light was being put in now as part of the development agreement with Mindbody and is in line with the overall development plan for the area.
The signal itself is 100-percent funded by Mindbody and construction contracted by them, with a fee paid for City inspections.
Plans in the works for a City’s annexation of Chevron’s Tank Farm Road property are entirely separate, but physically proximate. They include putting in a roundabout at the current intersection of Santa Fe Road and Tank Farm and extending Santa Fe to meet a new industrial and office complex.
The Chevron project is phased in 5-year increments, so it is not an immediate change. Of interest to the next generation of SLO drivers, the roundabout planned for Tank Farm would be the first of many in the City, as it’s been decided on as the preferred intersection model going forward.
