News

Fancy travel plazas coming to I-26 interchanges

Under construction are a Sheetz on U.S. 25 at Naples Road in Fletcher (top left) and a QuikTrip on Upward Road at Ballenger Road (top right). Spinx plans a convenience store-gas station on Upward Road across from Dairi-O (bottom left) while Ingles has started construction on its ninth supermarket in the county on U.S. 25 at Butler Bridge Road (bottom right).

By Bill Moss, Published: March 22, 2024

The big truck-stop service stations with prepared food choices in large convenience stores are discovering Henderson County.

Construction is under way on a new Quik Trip on Upward Road at Ballenger Road north of the I-26 interchange and on a new Sheetz at the Fletcher-Mountain home exit of the interstate highway. The Spinx Co. of Greenville, South Carolina, just closed last month on a 4½-acre site to build a travel plaza on Upward Road across from Dairi-O. And a fleet of excavators is scraping dirt now for the county’s newest Ingles, on U.S. 25 at Butler Bridge Road.
If they’re not the famous Bucee’s, they are fancy enough to offer plenty of fast-food choices and well-stocked convenience stores.
Gary Jones, a commercial real estate broker who deals frequently with national companies seeking to buy land for new locations, said the gasoline and diesel sellers are recognizing they can profit from the area’s growth.
“It’s kind of like Dollar General putting out the small mom and pops,” he said. “Spinx is family owned but if you look at these — their parent companies — they’re big players.”
He pointed out that that another huge travel plaza franchise, Pilot Travel Centers, was just bought in January by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett’s investment company had already acquired 80 percent of the Knoxville-based company before it bought the remaining 20 percent at the beginning of the year. Founded in 1958, Pilot over the years acquired Flying J, Speedway, Mr. Fuel and Speedway-Wilco among other chains.
One factor that could have influenced the chains’ decision to target Upward Road could be the new Blue Commerce Center, a giant distribution center nearing completion that’s expected to draw dozens of tractor-trailers a day if not more.
Here are the details of four big service station-retail stores on the two interchanges:
• Sheetz: The Altoona, Pennsylvania- based company with more than 700 stores announced late last year that it was planning to open several new locations in Western North Carolina over the next five years. They include the one under construction on U.S. 25 at Naples Road in Fletcher, one near Asheville Regional Airport and one off Smokey Park Highway in Candler. C-Store Dive, a trade outlet that tracks convenience store trends, quoted a Sheetz spokesperson describing the stores as a “restaurant-style experience with self-service kiosks as well as both indoor and outdoor seating.” Besides gas pumps, they also electric vehicle charging ports, drive-thrus and car washes and more.
• QuikTrip: Like the Sheetz site, the tall shelter covering the gas pumps is up at the new QT. Part of a chain that brands itself as “more than a gas station,” the Upward Road store is QT’s first in Western North Carolina. The Oklahoma-based company has 37 stores in the Charlotte metro area, 19 in Greenville-Spartanburg and 941 nationwide. Its fast-food specialty is counter-ordered “Snackies” from its QuikTrip Kitchens. Items include breakfast scrambles, hot dogs, eight different subs and wraps, pork, brisket and chicken barbecue sandwiches, mac and cheese, croissants, pretzels and soft-serve ice cream.
• Ingles: The Black Mountain-based supermarket chain continues its aggressive expansion with a ninth supermarket in Henderson County, planting a large store in a growing area of the county. Besides a super Ingles, the 11.2-acre shopping center would contain an Ace Hardware store, a convenience store with gas pumps and an outparcel for an unspecified retail or food use, according to a site plan the company filed with Henderson County.
• Spinx: The Hendersonville City Council took action on March 7 to annex the property on Upward Road at Old Spartanburg Road and apply the city’s Commercial Highway Mixed Use zoning, which allows the travel plaza. The Spinx Co. applied for the satellite annexation of five parcels after it bought the land from Rex’s Indoor Range owner Spevines Rex Jones Jr., Deitra Blythe Jones, Michael C. Jones and Cecilia Jones. The Upward Road property is the second parcel of land in the county that Spinx purchased for a new location. It filed an application in late 2022 to build a 6,434-square-foot convenience store, 1,182-square-foot car wash and fuel pumps on the northeast corner of the Fletcher-Mountain Home I-26 interchange. No other action has been taken on that site. Jones, the commercial broker, said he doubted the company would move forward with stations at two interchanges that close to one another.
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