Two years ago a dollar store was planned on this site. Now something else is coming

Two years ago, a discount store was planned at the corner of Riverside Drive and Ingleside Avenue, but now the construction of a convenience store is underway.

A Shell Food Mart is being built at 2010 Riverside Drive by Sonal 2019 Inc., owned by Sonal Patel of Macon.

“It will be a traditional convenience store,” Patel said.

The 4,000-square-foot store on the 1.38-acre site will have four gas pumps. It is expected to employ three workers and would be open 6 a.m.-11 p.m. seven days a week, said Patel, who owns two other convenience stores in Macon.

In March 2016, officials for Dollar General explained at a Macon zoning meeting its plan to build a 9,100-square-foot store on the corner.

But the Macon-Bibb County Planning & Zoning Commission had several questions during that meeting about the company’s site plan — including why the store wouldn’t have access from Riverside Drive — so the matter was deferred until the discounter prepared a revised site plan. Its plans never proceeded.

The convenience store will have two access points — one on Riverside and one on Ingleside, Patel said.

Work on the site began about two weeks ago and should be completed by next spring, he said.

The property was the site of the first Shoney’s in Macon, which opened as a drive-in restaurant in 1962, according to Telegraph archives. The original Shoney’s was torn down in the mid-1980s and another Shoney’s built in its place. In more recent years, the building housed a Chinese restaurant, which was torn down, so the Shell Food Mart could be built.