Ingles unveiled plans for a new super store at the Holly Springs Plaza during a presentation to the Macon County Planning Board.
The new store, which would include a 205,522-square-foot Ingles grocery store, multiple retail shops, an eight-pump gas station and a car wash.
Ingles executives said they may try to preserve some existing buildings but that most will be demolished to make way for the complex.
The site currently occupied by the existing Ingles would be demolished, and plans are to build a 55,000-square-foot structure to house an unnamed retail store. Plans call for 598 parking spaces.
The new store could employ about 300 people, not including the outlying stores, according to Ingles executives.
Preston Kendall, Ingles project manager, said the Georgia Road store has exceeded expectations and has strained parking capacity there. The other buildings at the complex have not been leased in part because Ingles doesn’t want competition for parking spaces.
The new store would take some of that traffic away from the Georgia Road store, Kendall said.
Ingles hasn’t identified other tenants.
“We’ve got verbal [commitments], but we can’t say officially until they sign a letter of commitment, and no one’s done that yet,” he said.
The planning board unanimously endorsed the project, which will now head to the Franklin Town Cancel.