QuikTrip coming to west Macon marks third planned for Middle Georgia

A QuikTrip convenience store and gas station is planned for west Macon.

The Macon-Bibb Planning & Zoning Commission gave final site plan approval Monday for the convenience store and gas station.

The commission also gave conceptual approval of a drive-thru restaurant as well as self-storage buildings to be constructed on the same site.

Located at 5129 Mercer University Drive, the site is near the northbound ramp of Interstate 475. The proposal was submitted by Halpern Enterprises, a commercial real estate firm headquartered in Atlanta.

“We’ve contracted to purchase both parcels and combine them because neither parcel is quite large enough to accommodate our primary user, that would be QuikTrip Corporation,” Steve West, vice president for development for Halpern Enterprises, told commissioners during the virtual meeting.

“The idea here is to combine the two parcels, have two retail locations in the front: a QuikTrip and a quick service restaurant and then in the back area on Tucker Valley Road to have a secondary use of storage.”

Fencing is envisioned for the self-storage portion of the property.

“The self-storage is not yet put together,” West said. “I mean, this what we think we’ll go there. But the QuikTrip is the primary project that we’re putting forth today.

“The other two are for, I believe it was called, for conditional approval or preliminary approval. They’ll have to be subject to the final approval later on.”

West said they don’t have a confirmed user for the restaurant site.

“Unfortunately we learned last night that we submitted some sort of stock elevations of a representative restaurant that happened to have Whataburger on the side of it and that began to be reported,” West said. “We have not made any agreements with Whataburger or anybody else. This was just representative of the type of user that would eventually go there.”

According to the proposal, the 3,500 square-foot restaurant would have 41 parking spaces, while the 4,999-square-foot convenience store would have 16 fuel pumps, 48 parking spaces and would offer packaged alcohol for sale.

The 1,200-square-foot commercial office building with three self-storage buildings and five parking spaces would be located behind the convenience store and gas station.

This will be the third QuikTrip location for Middle Georgia.

“We are planning to have this location built sometime during spring of ’22,” QuikTrip spokeswoman Aisha Jefferson-Smith said via email. “We are very much in the beginning stages.”

The Oklahoma-based chain is expected to open its first Middle Georgia location at 4934 Sardis Church Road at the end of February, Jefferson-Smith said. That’s along Interstate 75 in south Bibb County.

Additionally, QuikTrip is planning another, smaller location in Warner Robins in the area off Watson Boulevard (also known as the Georgia 247-Connector) and Peavy Road just off I-75. It’s expected to open in late 2021.