BY THEO DOUGLAS

WEDNESDAY, JUL 15, 2015 5:21 PM

The new Hosking Avenue-Highway 99 interchange is expected to alleviate traffic at nearby exits when it’s finished early next year, but a draft environmental report reveals a shopping center planned for the intersection's northeast corner could diminish those gains.

The land at the intersection’s northeast corner has been eyed for development for the better part of a decade — but those plans stalled during the recession.

Its shopping space has been scaled down about 20 percent since then, but fueled by the expected January completion of the Hosking interchange, an 800,000-square-foot retail center featuring a multi-screen movie theater, 240 hotel rooms and nearly 4,500 parking spaces is planned.

Landing a Bass Pro Shop, long considered a landmark anchor tenant, is still very much part of the plan — and the store is the only retailer actually named on a conceptual site plan. However, it remains unclear whether the company will locate a store in Bakersfield.

On Thursday, the Bakersfield Planning Commission will hear public testimony on the project’s draft Environmental Impact Report and direct city staff to address those comments in preparing the final EIR.

To be built, the project will ultimately need zone changes in land use from commercial and residential to commercial, and an amendment to the Metropolitan Bakersfield General Plan to delete the extension of Colony Street from Berkshire Road to South H Street.

Traffic around the proposed shopping center, on 85 acres bounded by Highway 99, South H Street, Hosking Avenue and Berkshire Road, is the biggest concern.

According to the project’s draft EIR, the shopping center would negatively impact traffic at several nearby intersections, including at South H Street and Panama Lane, and on Panama Lane between Wible Road and Highway 99.

At H and Panama, the project’s first phase would increase average delays from between 20 and 35 seconds per vehicle to between 35 and 50 seconds.

Completion of its second and final phase would increase average delays to more than 80 seconds per vehicle.

Many mitigation measures are indicated in the draft EIR, but because some existing roads are built out, the EIR notes “no improvements or other mitigation measures are feasible” at these locations, and impacts “would remain significant and unavoidable.”

Bakersfield Associate Planner Cecelia Griego acknowledged the project will have some negative impacts, but said they’re not likely to stop the development.

“It will put more cars on the road, but I don’t think it will be a big impact. The Highway 99 interchange will help, because instead of people getting off at Panama, they’ll get off at Hosking instead,” Griego said.

http://www.bakersfield.com/News/2015/07/15/Hosking-shopping-center-project-moving-forward.html