City Council squashes north Jackson convenience store plan

JACKSON, Tenn. — City Council members shot down plans Tuesday to build a new convenience store in north Jackson.

Undeveloped land at the intersection of McClellan Road and Pleasant Plains Road will stay like it is for now. City Council members voted Tuesday to keep the nearly three-acre plot zoned residential.

“We’re a neighborhood and we’re residential,” Mark Thompson, who lives nearby, said. “We’re not commercial, and that’s the way we’d like to stay.”

Cox Oil Company/Little General Convenience Stores Director of Business Development Ryan Higginbotham said they wanted to build a nearly 4,000-square-foot store on the property with office space behind it. Higginbotham said the store would have created between 20 and 25 new jobs.

“We’re certainly disappointed,” Higginbotham said. “We would have loved to have had this store at this site.”

Councilman Randy Wallace represents that part of the city. “The traffic’s already pretty heavy on that corner, and a convenience store would just add so much more traffic,” Wallace said.

Seven councilmen voted to keep the property residential. Vicki Foote and Johnny Dodd both abstained.

Dodd said he wants to be fair to all communities in the city. “When you give your reason because of beer sales in a particular community, schools in a particular community, we have them all over our community, all over our city,” Dodd said.

The landowner declined to talk on camera after the vote but did say he is not sure about the future of the property.

The proposed developer said he does not plan to appeal the council’s decision and may try to find another location for this project. “We will continue to try to find spots that we believe we can service the community,” Higginbotham said.