New building going up for Take 5 oil change next to Golden Girls
Workers were busy framing up the building on Monday for the new Take 5 oil change business on North Charles G. Seivers Boulevard in Clinton, next door to the Golden Girls restaurant. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Workers were finishing the framing up of the building Monday as the temperature outside moved into the mid-60s under sunny skies.
The property owner and contractor John Davenport of Jellico said earlier that he planned to have the building finished in time for Take 5 to open its first Clinton location in March.
It’s on the site of the former Anderson County Tourism Council office, which was in a rustic-looking log cabin on the property.
In October, workers began to dismantle and move the log cabin to make way for construction of the oil-change business. The site is just off Interstate 75, Exit 122.
“We auctioned the log cabin off, and we gave the new owner a couple of weeks to get it moved,” Davenport said at the time, adding. “Once it’s gone, we will move in and start on the new building.”
Davenport obtained a building permit from the city of Clinton last Sept. 10 for the $575,000, 1,835 square-foot building on the nearly half-acre site, whose official address is 115 Welcome Lane.
He bought the property for $706,750 in July 2023 from Anderson County, after the Tourism Council initially made plans to join with the Anderson County Chamber of Commerce in a new building on North Main Street at North Hicks Street in downtown Clinton.
Those plans fell through, however, when the County Commission decided not to fund that project. The Tourism Council has since moved into space it leased in the Bear Stephenson building at 210 North Charles G. Seivers Blvd., and the Chamber of Commerce changed the site for its new headquarters.
Signs were posted in early April 2024 at the front of the lot to announce that the Take 5 Oil Change business was coming.
Take 5 is a regional chain of oil-change and car-wash locations based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company opened one of its Take 5 oil-change locations in Powell early last year.
The company calls it “The Stay in Your Car 10-Minute Oil Change.”
According to its website, take5.com, the company was founded in 1984 in Louisiana as Rapid Oil Change.
“It offered quick oil changes, minor repairs and other maintenance services,” the website says. “Since then, it has seen expansion, faced disaster and become part of the community.”
In 1996, the company “launched the first stay-in-your-car oil change. The shops featured shallow pits, drive through oil changes, synchronized oil changes, and fast, friendly service,” according to the website.
It now has more than 60 locations in “eight states across the southeastern United States from Virginia to Texas,” the website notes.
All stores are company owned; there are no franchised operations yet.
Take 5 launched its car-wash business in 2020.
There are no plans for the Clinton Take 5 location to include a car wash.
The new Tidal Wave Auto Spa opened in November 2023 just a few doors down from the planned Take 5 site, and there already was a car wash nearby on the opposite site of Seivers Boulevard.
As for Davenport, he recently built a Family Dollar store in Jellico, and was working on new Dunkin’ Donuts and Dollar Tree stores in LaFollette. He said he was also developing the new Department of Corrections training center in Clinton’s Eagle Bend Industrial Park.
