"There's no recognition of how much Acton has changed since then." Jacqueline Ayer, correspondence secretary for the Acton Town Council, said that in an Antelope Valley Press report about a stretch of Sierra Highway that has been arguing with itself since 2016. She wasn't talking about traffic lights or property values. She was talking about a two-acre lot between a Jack in the Box and Acton Auto Parts that somehow still doesn't have a final answer on what gets built there.
Most people who drive that block know it as the empty pad next to the feed store. The feed store's future and a proposed burger drive-thru are included in the same permit application.
The Lot Between Two Businesses
The site sits on the south side of Sierra Highway, west of Crown Valley Road, wedged between the existing Jack in the Box and Acton Auto Parts, with the Acton 76 station across the street. It's the kind of parcel that reads as leftover space until you learn what's actually proposed for it: a 6,000-square-foot retail building and a separate restaurant pad with a drive-thru window.
The restaurant is Primo Burger. The retail building is where things get more interesting for anyone who's shopped at Country Club Feed & Supply, because that family business is the other tenant in this same project.
One Permit, Two Businesses
County land use planning bundles proposals like this into a single conditional-use permit when they share a site. In practice, that means the entitlement covering Primo Burger's drive-thru is the same document that covers:
- A 3,000-square-foot expanded home for Country Club Feed & Supply
- Two additional attached retail spaces in the same 6,000-square-foot building
- The Primo Burger restaurant and drive-thru lane on an adjacent pad
Doug and Joanna Gaudi, who own Country Club Feed & Supply, said after the project's original approval that they were looking forward to expanding and continuing to serve the Acton community. Their upgrade and the drive-thru window arrived as a package deal, which is exactly what made the 2016 hearing so contentious. You couldn't vote for one without the other showing up too.
The Vote Nobody Fully Loved
When the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors first took this up, the room split in a way that had less to do with Primo Burger as a restaurant and more to do with what a drive-thru window would invite next. Acton resident Tracie Tenerelli argued that approving Primo would just open the door to more freeway-serving businesses. Jean Laird raised safety concerns for equestrians navigating additional turning traffic. Gary Lubben supported the drive-thru specifically because it helps customers with limited mobility. Victor Vega, director of the Antelope Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, spoke in favor of the project based on Primo's track record in the community.
The Town Council landed somewhere in the middle. Both Jacki Ayer and fellow council member Kelly Teno urged the Board to approve the project but strip out the drive-thru, citing a traffic study showing that with the drive-thru added, traffic at Acton's intersections would exceed signal capacity. The Board approved it anyway, drive-thru included, with then-Supervisor Antonovich distinguishing this project from a Taco Bell drive-thru the Board had denied months earlier, on the grounds that Primo's approval would also upgrade a locally owned business.
The public comment numbers from that hearing tell their own story about how divided the town was:
| 2016 hearing, public comment | Count |
|---|---|
| Signatures opposing the drive-thru, submitted by Save Our Rural Town | 1,000 |
| Letters and cards supporting the project | 473, representing 506 people |
Most of the supportive letters came from residents inside the Acton Community Standards District, the same zoning overlay meant to protect the town's rural character. Both sides were arguing from inside that boundary.
Why the Court Sent It Back
The opposition group, Save Our Rural Town, didn't stop at public comment. They sued, and in 2021 a Los Angeles Superior Court judge agreed that the county's traffic analysis had understated the project's impact and that environmental review had been insufficient. The ruling voided the prior entitlement entirely and sent the county back to do a Supplemental Traffic Assessment from scratch.
That's the part of the story most residents missed, because it happened quietly through the courts rather than at a public hearing. The project didn't die. It just went back into the review process it had already been through once.
The Same Footprint, a New Filing
According to a July 2025 report in the Antelope Valley Press, the county released a new Mitigated Negative Declaration for the project, reopening public comment. The footprint hadn't changed. Same 6,000-square-foot retail building, same feed store expansion, same drive-thru. The new environmental findings concluded there were no significant impacts, and issues related to cultural and tribal resources were found to be less than significant with mitigation.
Ayer, still on the Town Council, told the paper that nothing about the plan reflected how much Acton had changed since 2016. She also flagged a separate concern taking shape a few hundred feet away: a proposal for a new 24-hour gas station next to the existing Acton 76 station, still in early stages and not yet scheduled for a hearing. Considered on its own, that gas station is a separate application. Considered next to Primo's reopened review, it's the kind of cumulative traffic and zoning question the Town Council has said the county needs to weigh together rather than project by project.
As of the most recent reporting on this cycle, no public hearing date had been announced. Anyone who wants to track it directly can follow the Acton Town Council's meeting agendas, where correspondence on county land use items typically shows up before it reaches the county calendar.
What Rural Commercial Has Actually Meant Here
Acton's zoning language uses categories like A-1-1 and A-2-2, agricultural designations that show up regularly in current county planning filings for properties near Sierra Highway, most of them tied to horse and livestock use rather than commercial development. That's the backdrop against which any drive-thru proposal gets read here. It isn't zoned like a suburban commercial corridor, and residents who've spent a decade fighting over one project are, in effect, defending that distinction one conditional-use permit at a time.
The town's most durable example of what commercial use has looked like here for a long time is a few minutes down the road. The 49er Saloon opened in 1889 as Acton's first hotel and saloon, back when the town was still a mining camp built around the Red Rover Mine, and it's still serving food today. It's also, according to local histories, part of why Acton picked up its nickname as the Beverly Hills of the Antelope Valley, a reference to the ranch-style properties and equestrian estates that surround its rural commercial strip rather than to anything resembling suburban density.
That contrast, a 137-year-old saloon a few minutes from a still-undecided drive-thru, is really what this fight has been about since 2016. Nobody on either side of the Primo Burger debate has argued against Country Club Feed & Supply expanding. The disagreement has always been about what gets legally attached to that expansion, and whether a rural highway can absorb one more drive-thru lane without becoming something else.
If you're keeping an eye on what happens at that Sierra Highway lot, or you own property nearby and want to understand how a reopened entitlement like this one could affect traffic patterns or zoning nearby, reach out to Paula Stafford Estates. We track filings like this one because they shape daily life on Acton's roads long before they show up in any listing.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
