New strip center next to open on N. Charles Seivers by year end
Development will add subs, pizza, nail salon, cellphone store on 1.2-acre site
Grading for a new strip business center on North Charles G. Seivers Boulevard was underway on Thursday. The site, between Sonic and Wendy’s, will include a four-unit building housing a cellphone store, pizza restaurant, nail salon and sub shop. (photo:G. CHAMBERS WILLIAMS III )
The city of Clinton on May 12 issued a building permit for a nearly $1 million, 7,000-square-foot shell building at the site, at 2220-2226 N. Charles G. Seivers Blvd. Contractor was listed as Creative Structures, Inc.
Called the Clinton Shopping Center, the new four-unit building will be the home to US Cellular, The Noire Nail Bar, Penn Station Subs and a high-end pizza restaurant, said Peter Medlyn of Oliver Smith Realty in Knoxville, who is the leasing agent.
Developer for the project is John Davenport of Davenport Construction Co. in Jellico, Medlyn said.
Although a drawing of the center layout on the Oliver Smith Realty website shows a Dairy Queen as one of the tenants, Medlyn said that’s not accurate.
Meanwhile, across the highway, the Arby’s restaurant will be undergoing a $275,000 interior renovation, according to a separate building permit issued by Clinton on May 20 to Arby’s Restaurant Group.
Podojil Builders was listed as the contractor for the Arby’s project. No further information was immediately available.
Also, work continues on the new Hammer’s Department Store building further west on Seivers Boulevard next to the site of Anderson County’s former Glen Alpine Waste Convenience Center.
Crews last week were out in numbers working on high scaffolding to lay the brick for the front of the building.
There were earlier reports that a Dairy Queen “DQ Grill & Chill” restaurant would be built across the highway next to Walgreen’s pharmacy, but Medlyn said the developer of that project “was not able to obtain the necessary franchise,” and would not be going forward with the DQ there, either.
“We are planning to have our center finished by the end of the year,” Medlyn said last Friday.
The project is already months behind schedule. A sign posted in spring 2021 on the site said the center would be opening that fall, then in August, Medlyn had told The Courier News that the center would open this spring.
The site is less than a mile from Interstate 75, Exit 122.
Last August, Medlyn said that four businesses would be locating there, including a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through window on one end.
Medlyn said he can’t yet reveal the name of the pizza restaurant that will be occupying one of the four spaces.
Massive grading, buildup and leveling of the site has been underway for several weeks.
The 1.2-acre site was owned until recently by LKM Properties, the holding company for Weigel’s convenience stores properties.
Clinton City Manager Roger Houck said that Weigel’s had plans earlier to put a second Clinton store on that site, but gave up on the idea when the Tennessee Department of Transportation declined Weigel’s request for a cut through the median on Seivers Boulevard so traffic could access the store from both sides of the highway.
According to preliminary plans, the Clinton Shopping Center will have 81 parking spaces.