SAN DIMAS - The Gold Line won't arrive here for at least a decade, but the owners of a local business have already found themselves in its path.
Susan and Randy Kehr, who run Storage Centers on Arrow Highway, are trying to stave off plans to convert their property into parking for an extension of the passenger train.
The Kehrs made their opposition known this spring during public workshops on the project.
"We were shocked and dismayed to find out that our business is being considered as a proposed site for the parking structure," Susan Kehr said. "We have been here since 1977, and we want to continue providing storage service to the citizens of San Dimas for many years to come."
Investors helped Kehr's father establish the business, and many of those people now depend on the profits, Kehr said.
The San Dimas station would connect the city to other foothill communities as well as Los Angeles.
The Gold Line now runs from L.A.'s Union Station to Pasadena. Construction is under way on a Pasadena-to- Azusa segment.
A segment from Azusa to Montclair would be next, although funding isn't yet in place, and planning is still in preliminary stages.
An environmental-impact report is scheduled to be released in August.
The Gold Line construction authority sees the Storage Centers site as the best location for a parking structure because of its proximity to downtown San Dimas, its access to the south side
of the tracks and its accessibility to traffic from Arrow Highway.
Planners try to minimize the displacement of residents and businesses, said Lisa Levy Buch, a spokeswoman for the construction authority.
"The agency is responsible through planning for all the facilities that we need for the project," Levy Buch said. "We try to do it as scientifically and subjectively as possible."
San Dimas previously considered a station near Bonita and Cataract avenues, close to the existing Pacific Railroad Museum, but residents in the area nixed the idea.
That led to the proposal for a station near San Dimas Avenue, and the city's redevelopment agency tried to play into the concept with Grove Station, a mixed-use development project that stalled, half-completed, during the recession. There is still undeveloped land northwest of Storage Centers, closer to the tracks.
"It is incredulous that our business, which is longstanding and successful, would be picked for parking when many other options exist in the area, such as the empty land at Grove Station and elsewhere, unleased buildings, the city maintenance yard and an existing park-and-ride lot," Kehr said.
San Dimas doesn't want to use the vacant land because it has a plan and entitlements in place to meet state-mandated affordable-housing requirements. The construction authority studied other locations and found problems such as pedestrian safety.
Still, the proposal is a long way from becoming final.
"If (the Kehrs) are not a willing seller, it would be part of the environmental report," Levy Buch said.
Eminent domain is a possibility if the location plan remains unchanged through the long approval process, though the construction authority considers that a last resort.
City Council members have bounced around the idea of building a parking structure on top of the storage business, despite height restrictions that have limited the proposal to two stories.
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