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Love's provides details of new Sidney location

The Love’s Travel Stop planned for the Interstate 80 area promises to accommodate some of Sidney’s voluminous truck traffic while maintaining safety for other travelers.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the city council approved the re-zoning of the parcel planned to house the stop south of the Holiday Inn. Steve Walters, real estate project manager for Love’s spoke with the council about the company’s plans.

“Mr. Love and one of his sons has been on the site already,” Walters said.

Tom Love, who founded the company 50 years ago in a small Oklahoma town, is still very involved in the business.

Walters credited his company’s decision to make this $7-$10 million investment in Sidney to a diesel fuel tax hike in Wyoming. Now truckers are fueling their trucks in Sidney before heading west, he said.

“Sidney has been on our radar for quite some time and then when that decision was made it really bumped it up on our priority list,” Walters said.

The company plans for a very large store in Sidney with a restaurant and parking space for around 100 trucks.

“We’re looking at some new food concepts,” Walters said. “We’re looking at possibly an IHOP express, which is something new for us.”

Other possibilities include a Burger King or Carl’s Jr./ Hardees.

For the sake of safety Love’s strives to have brightly illuminated facilities, Walters explained. The company understands that sometimes truck drivers carry a negative stereotype and strives to ensure families feel welcome and safe at its stores.

“For those reasons we make sure that our lots are very well-lit, we make sure that they’re designed in a manner where they’re as safe as possible so we can kind of watch what’s going on around the trucks,” Walters said.

This location will have a truck tire shop and will provide 24-hour roadside assistance, as well as light mechanical work. The store will likely employ between 30-45 people and will be open 24 hours a day.

Usually, from the groundbreaking date it takes the company around six months to build facilities of this size, but in Sidney Love’s will have to work with Nebraska Department of Roads first, because it controls the access point the company planned to use on Upland Pkwy.

“We have to work through a few issues with them,” Walters said.

The company had hoped to open the store by year’s end but now thinks it won’t be ready for business until the first quarter of 2015, due to weather and other issues.

“Worst case scenario, they can still use Chase Boulevard,” said city manager Gary Person. “They planned to re-build it anyway and to widen it, so it’s just preferably you’d have two accesses in and out and at some point in the future that’ll likely happen we’re just hoping it’s sooner than later but they control the issue.”

Chase Blvd. is the road that runs west from Upland Pkwy., south of the Holiday Inn. If the company can’t work something out with the department of roads it will have to adjust plans for truck and car traffic.

“We go through a rigorous process to make sure that that car traffic is safe enough away from the truck traffic,” Walters said.

This access point denial will make that more complicated, he said.

 

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