In a 7-2 vote the Sacramento City Council rejected developer Paul Petrovich's plan Tuesday night to build a gas station next to a planned Safeway at the newly developed Curtis Park Village.

After hearing hours of testimony at a packed council meeting, city leaders voted to overturn the Sacramento Planning and Design Commission's June approval of the conditional use permit that paved the way for the gas station.

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Curtis Park residents pleaded with city council members not to approve the gas station that called for six gas pumps and 12 nozzles, with an option to expand to eight gas pumps and 16 nozzles.

Petrovich said the supermarket would only join the development if a Safeway gas station was included.

The company said the store would bring an estimated 200 jobs to the area.

Neighbors became worried about the traffic and air pollution the project would bring to their community.

Residents of the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association argued that it made no sense to add a large gas station and traffic to a community, one that promised to be friendly to pedestrians, bicycles and public transit commuters.

"This is supposed to be a transit-oriented neighborhood," said Curtis Park resident Rosanna Herber. "This developer has received over $9 million to make it transit-oriented."

Petrovich made several concessions to the council and neighbors that included moving the gas station to the back of the project, cutting the hours of operation from 24 hours to 6 a.m. to midnight and reducing the number of pumps from eight to six.

"We have been working on this for 16 months on the conditional use permit," said Petrovich. "We have listened, listened some more and made changes and made some more changes."

Council members Larry Carr and Allen Warren voted in favor of the project while the rest of the council sided with neighbors' concerns over traffic and other issues.