You just may ‘love’ this: Three restaurants and travel center opens

Some folks at the new Love’s Travel Stop in south Bibb by midday Thursday just happened to notice the center while driving along Interstate 75 at the Sardis Church Road exit.

But Evelyn and Reggie Gibson had been waiting for the “coming soon” sign to come down. The couple live on Sardis Church Road.

“Being a neighbor, we like having more places to eat,” Evelyn Gibson said, as they ate crispy fried chicken from Chester’s Chicken, one of three restaurants in the travel center. “But we are very concerned about the truck traffic.”

But she added that maybe the trucks would just come to the truck stop and get back on the interstate.

“It’s nice,” Reggie Gibson said about the center. “They really have a lot of variety of stuff you can buy here.”

In addition to Chester’s, the 12,000-square-foot Love’s at Exit 153 includes Subway and Godfather’s Pizza Express restaurants, gourmet coffee, fresh fruit and gift items in the retail area. It has 14 gas fuel pumps and 10 diesel fuel pumps covered with a bright yellow and red awning.

Also, it has a separate retail area that focuses on its truck driver customers, as well as showers, laundry facilities, 119 truck parking spaces, a separate tire center for trucks and truck scales.

General manager Quintin Moore said the travel center has 52 employees, but it would be adding more workers to its tire center, which will be opening soon. Jobs are posted at www.snagajob.com.

The Gibsons agreed that the jobs the center creates is a good thing for the area.

Moore said he’s been on the site about a month, and there was a lot of interest in the new center before it opened.

“We’ve had a lot of cars and (truck) drivers even come through the barricades trying to come in,” he said.

The first customer showed up about 7 a.m. Thursday, and by the middle of the day, the car and truck fueling islands were getting steady traffic. More than 20 trucks were in the parking area.

“So, I had a feeling we were going to take off and be pretty busy, but I wasn’t expecting this,” Moore said. “It’s a pleasant surprise — it really is.”

The center, which is Love’s 10th travel stop in Georgia, will be open every day.

A company representative said in early 2016 during a Bibb County zoning commission meeting that the Oklahoma City-based Love’s was making a $12 million investment in the facilities. The company bought the 17-acre site south of Hartley Bridge Road from the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority.

The business will hold an official grand opening at 10 a.m. May 4, and it will celebrate by donating $2,000 to a local nonprofit at that time.

“We look forward to becoming part of the Macon community and providing the ‘Clean Places, Friendly Faces’ Love’s is known for to a new part of the state,” Tom Love, founder and executive chairman of Love’s, said in a news release.

Founded in 1964, Love’s has more than 420 locations in 40 states. It remains family owned and operated, and it employs more than 17,000 people. For more information, go to www.loves.com.

This story was originally published April 27, 2017 at 11:19 AM with the headline "You just may ‘love’ this: Three restaurants and travel center opens."