Benicia Planning Commission on Thursday will hear a request from Geoff Quares to operate a 2,600-square-foot personal health and fitness studio, Profaction Mixed Martial Arts, at 4876 East Second St.

Associate Planner Suzanne Thorsen wrote that the studio would offer group and individual martial arts training in classes of no more than 20 at a time. Operating hours would vary, ranging from as early as 5:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays for individual training and 4-8 p.m. or 9 p.m. weekdays, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays for classes.

The training center’s neighbors would be manufacturing, warehousing and distribution companies on all but the north side, which is vacant, Thorsen wrote.

Quares’s business would occupy a tenant space inside a multi-unit building, she wrote. Classes would take place indoors.

Smaller fitness studios are allowed in the general industrial zoning, but a studio of Quares’s size requires a use permit.

Besides the workout and training area, Quares is proposing a waiting and changing area, an office, kitchen and restroom.

He built a mezzanine storage area without permits, and as one of the conditions of approval Thorsen is recommending prohibiting the mezzanine area for instruction, training, observation or any other use related to health and fitness.

Quares also would be required to obtain a building permit for any work that has been completed or that is under way, she wrote.

She said the site should have plenty of parking, and a parking survey indicated that during peak demand at least half of the spaces on the site were vacant.

To avoid any conflict with a nearby dance studio and church, Thorsen has recommended no group classes before 4 p.m. and that other activities shouldn’t exceed the studio’s share of parking.

Quares has lived in Benicia since 1997, and has 30 years of martial arts teaching experience in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Thorsen is recommending approval of Quares’s request.

The commission also will review the General Plan Annual Progress Report, including its annual Housing Element.

Once examined by both the commission and the City Council, the document will be sent to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

The Planning Commission will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.

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