Business owner sues Marina over bike lane construction

Freshly painted bike lanes along Imjin Road in Marina could already be history and now one business owner is taking the city to court over it. It’s all because of state money the city just received to widen the same part of Imjin Road where these bike lanes were just put in.

Ord Market sits along the part of Imjin Road where nine months of bike lane construction just wrapped up and the owner said that was painful enough for business. Now he’s bracing for more construction and said the city’s poor planning is hurting his bottom line.

“The bicycle lane has no direction it doesn’t go anywhere. We have not seen a bicycle on the road to date,” Ord Market president Darryl Choates.

At the intersection of Imjin and Reservation Road, can see the bike lane in the middle of the street come to an end as you reach the other side.

Choates has owned Ord Market for 15 years. He said 85 percent of his business comes off Imjin Road for gas and food. He said the nine-month construction of new bike lanes hit the store’s pocketbook hard. But then things got worse.

Choates said the city announced funding to widen Imjin Parkway to four lanes. But he doesn’t have a problem with that project.

“It’s going to impact me but I am aware of the widening of the road lane, that was negotiated prior to our entrance into the facility,” Choates said.

Choates said he decided to sue Marina because the city refused to listen to his requests to do all of the construction at once.

“There attitude was more of we don’t care, we have the right to do what we want to do,” Choates said.

Marina’s city manager didn’t want to give a statement on camera because of pending litigation. But he did give us some information about plans for Imjin Road. The city said the expansion project will cost about $17 million and it will be years before construction on the roadway even begins.

But for Choates the damage was already done when the city went ahead with the bike lanes in the first place.

“2.2 million dollars on a bike lane that you’re going to tear out. That’s not acceptable. You know we’re gonna have to go to court because that’s what the city of Marina wants us to do,” Choates said.

The $1.6 million the city just got will go toward the design and environmental review portion of the project.