Franklin’s Town Council approved development of a new Ingles at the former site of the Holly Springs Plaza Walmart.
Representatives from Ingles presented plans to the town council at its Sept. 8 meeting to demolish 135,133 square feet of the existing shopping center to make room for a super-store complex. The 19.92-acre site would include the grocery store, space for multiple retail shops, a five-pump gas station and 509 parking spaces.
The current Ingles store at Holly Springs Plaza is expected to remain in operation until the new location is complete.
Preston Kendall, project manager for Ingles, said that the store will revitalize the plaza by attracting more business to all of its stores and creating more jobs.
“Everything kind of went to a halt [due to COVID-19], but we still have tenants lined up,” Kendall said. “We’re going to have four big-box stores. We’re going to have two sections that are going to be retail for smaller [stores].”
The town’s planning board recommended approval of the special-use permit to allow the business to expand the location’s infrastructure by about 44,000 square feet. After reviewing construction plans, the council members were confident that the new store would be beneficial to the area. One concern they did raise was related to hazardous runoff that could potentially affect the nearby pond.
“It’s an awful lot of impervious material here,” mayor Bob Scott said. “Some really bad runoff could be down here, especially with the storms we’re having now.”
However, engineer John Cox said the team would be installing new infrastructure to ensure water quality in the pond, hopefully keeping it cleaner than it already is.
“We’ll actually put water quality units [in the pond],” Cox said. “It’s basically a large manhole that creates a vortex and it takes the trash, the sediment and all the floating oils and things like that out. That’s a state requirement that we’re required to do.”
Cox also sought to ease concerns about increased traffic flow on Hyatt Road. He said that their traffic studies and working with the NCDOT didn’t show any reason to worry.
“Since the site was previously fully developed and consisted of a Walmart, Ingles grocery store and many shops on the property, the anticipated traffic flows will not be more than what is proposed on the submitted development plan,” Cox said.
The town council voted unanimously to approve the special use permit. Ingles CFO Ron Freeman says that there is no official timeline available yet for the construction of the new store.