LABELLE -- The LaBelle City Commission made a zoning change at their Oct. 8 meeting that opens the door for a proposed Wawa convenience store and gas station at the gateway to the city's historic downtown.

LaBelle has approved changing the land use designation of a vacant 1.58-acre corner at Hickpochee Avenue and North Main Street from "Downtown District" to "Commercial." The Downtown District category does not allow auto-oriented uses such as gas stations, so the change was the project's biggest hurdle.

Developer Com Terra Acquisitions, LLC, represented by planner Daniel DeLisi of DeLisi, Inc., is proposing a Wawa store of up to 7,000 square feet with fuel pumps and food service at 10 West Hickpochee Avenue. The lot sits on the north side of SR 80 between College Street and Main Street.

The site once held strip commercial buildings under the Trading Post planned unit development, approved in 2008, which also allowed a convenience store with fuel pumps. That approval expired; the buildings were cleared, and the property has sat vacant since.

Plans call for four driveways, two on College Street and two on Main Street, with no direct access from SR 80. A 15-foot landscaped buffer with a berm and hedgerow would line the highway frontage.

City staff weighed the site's busy SR 80 frontage against its role as a walkable gateway to downtown, near schools and offices.

Staff warned that removing the parcel from the Downtown District could break up a downtown plan the city adopted about two decades ago. It also said fuel operations and multiple driveways could create conflicts between cars and pedestrians. The city's Downtown Review Committee reviewed the proposal in July 2025 and said it could not support it without major changes to the site layout and architecture.

This summer, sitting as the Local Planning Agency, the commission voted 3-2 to recommend approval. Residents at that hearing raised concerns about adding another gas station, traffic and pedestrian safety, while supporters said the store would serve the community. Commissioner Bobbie Spratt opposed the project over the traffic it would bring.

A traffic impact statement prepared for the developer by Simmons & White estimates about 3,800 vehicles a day would enter and leave the site. Because most would be drivers already traveling on SR 80 or Main Street, the study counts about 1,000 of those as new daily trips.

The study concludes that area roads and the SR 80 and Main Street signal will keep operating at an acceptable level overall. But it also shows the southbound Main Street approach to that signal, already congested, would see evening peak delays of more than two minutes per vehicle by 2029 with the store open. The study suggests retiming the signal, which the Florida Department of Transportation controls, to ease those delays.

City staff recommended 16 conditions if the commission moved forward, including:

• No drive-through, car wash or vehicle repair;
• No fueling for tractor-trailers, and no truck idling or overnight parking;
• "Old Florida" architecture with pitched roofs, porches and overhangs;
• No outdoor amplified music;
• A sidewalk at least 5 feet wide along the project's frontage before the store opens.