Charles Peagler spoke for many at the meeting when he said he was opposed to RaceTrac’s proposal.
Senior project manager Chad Baker (right) presented RaceTrac’s plans for the corner of Wesley Chapel Road and Snapfinger Woods Drive.
RaceTrac officials presented renderings of its proposed convenience store and landscaping plan for the Wesley Chapel exit on I-20.
Chad Baker, RaceTrac’s senior project manager, told residents at a March 5 community meeting that the company would file applications with the county on March 7 to lift zoning restrictions on two of the three parcels on which it plans to build the project.
The parcels are zoned commercial, but two of them are former restaurant properties.
The applications, which would come before the Board of Commissioners for a vote in May, are seeking to remove the restaurant conditions.
In 2011, the company put its plans on hold after an outpouring of opposition from residents about building a fifth gas station in a one-mile stretch of corridor.
In the past two years, Baker said his company had solicited feedback, listened to the community, tried to understand its concerns, and has implemented some of the recommendations into the applications.
He said the community wanted a patio and extensive landscaping and it has incorporated both. It also is incorporating plans to create a gateway at the I-20/Wesley Chapel ramps and transform the median from the ramp to its store with extensive landscaping.
Baker said the community also asked the company to try to attract other retailers to the area and it has had talks with many, including Busy Bee Restaurants.
“What we are here tonight to do is to inform you that we are going to file our applications,” he said. “We can’t tell you we are here to build because we have to get approval from the county commissioners.”
The new 5,928-square-foot service station also would sell fresh fruit and frozen yogurt.
“We are going to bring you our first-rate store,” Baker said.
Atlanta-based RaceTrac, which operates more than 300 stores nationwide, plans to build its new brick-and-stone façade prototype store at the location that was home to a RaceTrac service station in the 1990s. That station was condemned by the Georgia Department of Transportation to make way for the Wesley Chapel road-widening project that began in 2004.
The company, which promotes itself as a low-price leader on gas prices, competes aggressively with QuikTrip, which has a store a mile away at the corner of Wesley Chapel and Rainbow Drive.
There are three other gas stations – Shell, Exxon and Chevron – on Wesley Chapel before getting to the QuikTrip.
The majority of homeowners at Tuesday’s community meeting were vocal in opposition to another gas station on the street.
Charles Peagler, who lives in the Kings Ridge subdivision on South Hairston Road, said he has opposed the store from the beginning and still does because it will hurt the corridor’s development opportunities.
“I just don’t see viable businesses gravitating to a service station as an anchor. Let’s be realistic here – you put that RaceTrac there, you just killed our street. We know that.”
Kevin Chapman, who started the effort to landscape the I-20/Wesley Chapel ramps, said he too is opposed to the RaceTrac.
“There is a over-saturation of gas stations in the immediate area,” he said. “I just don’t see how this gas station is going to help us with the goals of the overlay.”
He also said the RaceTrac proposal doesn’t go far enough.
“What you are willing to give the community pales in comparison to the detriment that will be done to the community,” he said.
Delores Harper, who also lives in Kings Ridge, said she supports the proposed RaceTrac.
“In this day and age, we cannot stagnate,” she said. “We have got to move forward. It’s time for us to start thinking about the changes that we need to be making to our neighborhood.”
Harper said there are no gas stations on the north side of I-20 and that it is inconvenient to get in and out of the QuikTrip at the other end of the commercial strip.
“The community needs businesses that are willing to invest the kind of money that RaceTrac is doing,” she said. “I say it would be an attraction that would be nothing but positive for our neighborhood.”
Charles Glover, who lives in the Rainbow Creek subdivision, said that five years ago, he would have said no.
“Today, we need a service station,” he said. “We need some funds in DeKalb County, in the South DeKalb area. If they don’t build something in this area, our property taxes are going to skyrocket. If you don’t put something in this area, you are going to price the retired people like myself out of our homes. So we need to look at this.”
Sean MacLaurin, RaceTrac’s real estate manager, said it respects people who are homeowners but it is a property owner too.
“We own the property and have the right to try to build our store,” he said.
Dennis Webb Jr., RaceTrac’s attorney, said that if it got its application to the point where it is approved, the landscape plan would be part of the approval.
“There would be a set of zoning conditions that say we will do X, Y and Z. One of the conditions would say that we would landscape the median, that we would plant the interchange,” he said. “So there would be no question. If somewhere down the road someone said they didn’t do it, you would have something to point to and they will come and say you are in violation and you will be in trouble.”
Baker said RaceTrac stores generate $400,000 a year in taxes and it wants to be part of initiatives to help develop the corridor. “We are here, ready to start development. We are willing to be part of the Wesley Chapel Coalition and the CID.”
MacLaurin said that he has been in talks with DeKalb Economic Development Director Charles Whatley about development options for the corridor and has reached out to Busy Bee Restaurants and other retailers who are in the market for new growth.
“We can’t obviously spend other people’s money, but we have done our part to make them aware of opportunities on the corridor,” he said. “Every time something new develops here or redevelops, it benefits us as property owners and business owners.”
Baker said the community is located at the intersection of two major interstates and the demand for gasoline is here.
“In the two years that we have been researching this and talking to people about coming with us to develop this corridor, nothing that we have learned has made us want to walk away or run from this,” he said. “In fact, we are committed to this.”
1. purchase the vacant/ previous gas station lot and the Economy Inn hotel
or
2. purchase the vacant lot/ previous gas station lot and the liquor store.
This will provide the "other" side of Wesley Chapel Road a gas station while riding the community of hangout places for drunks, prostitutes, while beautifying the area.
NO WAY WE ACCEPT A GAS STATION IN THE CENTER OF THE LCI DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED WESLEY CHAPEL CID.
I mean, they already own the property they're vying for, so I don't see Racetrac doing it. But a good idea nonetheless.
To Mr. Charles Peagler who said “I just don’t see viable businesses gravitating to a service station as an anchor. Let’s be realistic here – you put that RaceTrac there, you just killed our street. We know that.”
When K-Mart, Walmart, then Walmart's replacement, Everest Institute, among other businesses all left the Wesley Chapel corridor YEARS AGO it died. Hell, the Malcolm Cunningham Ford dealer around the corner just closed last week. Don't blame Racetrac for what's obviously been going on for years.
@rtaylor28 There's a kroger across the street from the location in question. It definitely needs a renovation (along with the one on Rainbow Dr @ Candler), but there IS a kroger in the area.
I really wanted to reply to @Gresham Resident but they seem like a bitter old soul who wouldn't listen anyway.
@D Johnson Why not focus on erasing the eye sores from the area and allowing those that want to come in and beautify to do it? Like someone else said, that Hardees across the street has been closed FOREVER when will the sign come down?
And yes, we need to 'expand our mind' to envision new opportunities, but you should also OPEN your eyes and view the northern side of Wesley Chapel for what it has become. You're not gonna convince all those great new places to invest here without some form of development going on. Between Malcolm Cunningham and Everest both closing in the past couple months, Wesley Chapel could use a little TLC.
@Jamerican you made some very valid points, especially in reference to the new Racetrac location on Covington Hwy near Redan. What a lot of these DeKalb residents don't realize is that Racetrac has been building these super stores for at least 4 or 5 years, just not in our neighborhoods. I've seen these new concept stores in 3 different majority-white areas, and when I did i wondered why we couldn't have one close by. Oh... because our residents are fighting the very development we'd been begging for.
But honestly, my main reason for supporting this Raetrac is the same as Ms. Delores Harper's. There there are no gas stations on the north side of I-20 and it is inconvenient to get in and out of the QuikTrip at the other end of the commercial strip. Maybe these coalitions should work harder to eliminate the rundown businesses/gas stations on Wesley Chapel instead of trying to stop this company from investing in our community.
My opposition was configured around my view that the operation would become a hang out for the many vagrants that traverse and hover between QT at Snapfinger/Rainbow and the multiple low bite hotels in that area. I had believed that this RaceTrac would become a prime locale for interstate drug deals, and a general community menace kind of business. I do not believe any of these things anymore.
The new RaceTrac at the corner of Covington Highway and Redan Road has made me a believer that RaceTrac is committed to operating a clean and useful business that the community can be proud of.
The community angst might be the poor set of standards to which the County had held the other gas station mushrooms, and so by helping them to
show up like dandelions after a rainstorm.
I am one of those people who regularly use the Wifi availability at the Covington/Redan new RaceTrac, and I am very pleased by what I have been noticing there.
Students, business people, and just ordinary people come to this location to use the Wifi, to meet and talk with their friends, to study, and to eat, to charge their phones, and to buy gas.
The new RaceTrac is a positive force in this community, and it should be the standard to which the county hold not just new gas stations but all businesses- for their look and their feel to the buying public.
There is a very social atmosphere there- somewhat of a community meeting spot, that I believe has been helpful to the community. RaceTrac also stocks a large supply of healthy foods- vegetable trays, yogurt, healthy sandwiches. RaceTrac also has a very mature ice cream bar with multiple toppings- that are ideal as a treat for children or for the family to load up the car and come.
Children adore coming there, and the beer, sex magazines, and the other deleterious products are carefully positioned away from center stage where they could be a source of embarrassment and purveyor of the tawdry message about the business model.
Fact is that there many other gas stations in south central DeKalb, but none with the class and the community sensitivity of this new RaceTrac.
Another aspect of my support for the Wesley Chapel proposal is that the physical architecture could serve as a standard or a post in the sand for the re-development of that Wesley Chapel corridor.
The new proposed could become a basis on which to hold property owners and new developments to a standard of esthetics.
It is a way to cement the moral courage to hold new businesses to the compliance that are required of RaceTrac and to encourage existing businesses to step up their game.
There is no point in rejecting the new RaceTrac proposal, since there is ample potential for it to point to a new way of thinking about development in all of DeKalb County.
it looks like there model is to build them and then milk ever cent of profit out of the community without reinvesting in the facility.
We need development for establishments that provide a more viable service to the community than adding more gas stations that already dominates the entire area. We need to expand our minds to envisioning opportunities that will be more beneficial to our community for all of South Dekalb, especially Wesley Chapel. Areas like the old K-mart plaza and part of the Planet Fitness, we need to offer options such as HEALTHY eatery places (vegetarian, Fresh to Order, Marlow's Tavern, new restaurants by local citizens, etc), book stores, dog parks, tutoring centers, boutiques by local citizens, and other ideas such as the like. Let's work to build our own community with options that make sense and actually adds to the entire area. There is no reason that our area's value should continue to diminish when we can think outside the box to improve it.