Former C.L. Sharp & Son Hardware site will reopen soon as a convenience store
The former C.L. Sharp & Son Hardware store in Andersonville, which has been closed since 2016, will be reopened as a convenience store as early as January, the store’s operators say. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Ankit Patel and Raj Patel, who own the Liquor Depot, also in Andersonville, have leased the former hardware store property, said Sandra Sharp. Her family still owns the property, even though the store closed in 2016.
“We have leased it to an entity that has the Liquor Depot, and they are putting a convenience store in,” she said late last week. “They will be updating the gas pumps.”
Raj Patel told The Courier News that plans are to have the as-yet unnamed convenience store open as soon as possible, perhaps as early as January.
“We are still waiting for a cooler to be delivered, and for new gas pumps to be put in,” he said.
“We plan to have everything convenience stores usually have, including gas, groceries and some prepared foods,” Patel said.
Tentative hours will be 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, and the store will have “three or four employees,” he said.
Descendants of C.L. Sharp, the store’s former operator, announced in July 2022 that they were planning to reopen the hardware store that September, but those plans never materialized.
Kate Bennett, whose grandfather Conley Sharp Sr. started the business three-quarters of a century ago, said she would be the owner and manager of the reopened hardware store – just as she was when the store closed in 2016.
But she said last Friday that her plans were interrupted by the birth of a second child.
Since that time, the store building – near the northwest corner of Andersonville Highway (Tennessee 61) and Park Lane – has remained closed, with some of its old merchandise still on the shelves.
The hardware store began in another location across the highway and a couple of blocks west of the current location, and moved to where it is now in 1998, said Sandra Sharp, who is the daughter-in-law of Conley Sharp Sr. and mother of Kate Bennett.
She married Conley Sharp Jr., who went by the name Lewis, she said.
In the right rear of the store, a deli with dine-in and takeout service operated for about 12 years, and closed about 10 years ago when the operator, Winton Landrinou, died, Sandra Sharp said.
Patel said he and his business partner have no plans to reopen the deli, which offered Cajun and hillbilly food, according to Sharp.
He said there are negotiations underway with Citgo, Marathon and Sunoco to determine what gas will be sold at the new store.
