Sacramento spent millions fighting plan for a Curtis Park gas station. The bill is growing
The city of Sacramento has so far spent $2.3 million in legal fees defending itself against lawsuits filed by developer Paul Petrovich over a gas station he wanted to build in Curtis Park. And the fight is far from over.
Petrovich started filing lawsuits after the City Council in 2015 rejected a special permit that would have allowed him to build a gas station next to the Safeway in his Curtis Village retail and housing development.
Following that vote, Petrovich sued the city claiming a councilman was biased against him. A judge ordered the city to hold a new public hearing on the matter.
The city appealed that judgment, and lost in 2020.
The council redid the hearing last month, six years after the original one, and again rejected the permit.
But the saga will not end there.
Petrovich plans to file a new lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court, alleging the council again did not give him a fair hearing, he told The Sacramento Bee Tuesday.
Before the January hearing, Mayor Darrell Steinberg told two residents that he would never allow a gas station at Crocker Village, Petrovich alleges.
In addition, shortly after the hearing began, Councilwoman Mai Vang told a resident that she would vote against the gas station, or any gas station, Petrovich alleged. All three residents signed written declarations under penalty of perjury, Petrovich said.
Vang and Steinberg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
If Steinberg and Vang had recused themselves, the item likely still would have failed. It was a 7-0 vote, with council members Jay Schenirer and Katie Valenzuela recusing themselves.
But Petrovich says elected officials are not allowed to state how they will vote on development projects ahead of time.
He also alleges some council members used criteria they were not supposed to use in their reasoning for rejecting the gas station.
In his new lawsuit, Petrovich will again ask a judge to grant him the special permit to let him build the gas station.
If the city continues to fight it, the city’s expenses for outside legal counsel will likely continue to grow.
“It’s a waste of public funds,” Petrovich said. “I think they should all be held accountable.”
In addition, Petrovich has an active lawsuit against the city seeking more than $100 million in damages — money he claims he would have made if the gas station were open, and also for construction costs for the rest of the development that he says would have been lower if the gas station was included.
“As time goes on and I am denied my property rights, I have land sitting there undeveloped and I’ve got tenants that aren’t doing well,” Petrovich said. “(The gas station) is a traffic generator that was going to help the center overall.”
Asked if the city could have saved the $2.3 million if it redid the public hearing sooner, instead of appealing, city spokesman Tim Swanson said: “The City respectfully declines to speculate on hypothetical scenarios.”
