New Kwik Star store in the works in NE Cedar Rapids

Kwik Star soon could start work on a new convenience store at the corner of Center Point Road and 42nd Street NE in Cedar Rapids.

There, corporate parent Kwik Trip hopes to build a 5,600-square-foot convenience store with 20 gas pumps, senior development manager Leah Berlin said on Monday.

The La Crosse, Wis., company paid a combined $1.1 million for three property parcels totaling 1.46 acres at that intersection in March, according to city property records.

Later that month, the city's Development Services Division approved a site plan for the Kwik Star. Division staff currently are discussing demolition permit requirements with Kwik Trip, spokeswoman Emily Breen said.

The site currently has a vacant former BP gas station and car wash plus a commercial building once occupied by Domino's Pizza, Golden Nails and a liquor store.

Construction on the Kwik Star likely will wrap up in midsummer 2020 at the earliest, Berlin said.

Before its site plan was approved, Kwik Trip had eyed the property for redevelopment at least since April 2016, when it submitted a concept plan to the city, according to Cedar Rapids' online land development database.

Later that year, the company commissioned an environmental assessment of the site and found some groundwater contaminants, in concentrations higher than permitted under Iowa law, near a former underground storage tank.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources - which reviewed the findings - determined in 2016 that the chemicals did not pose a 'significant threat” to public health or the nearby McLoud Run trout stream.

Kwik Trip has opened three stores in Cedar Rapids and one in Marion since 2015. A fourth city Kwik Star is expected at 1001 Blairs Ferry Road NE the week of Oct. 14, with a Hiawatha store adjacent to Peck's Landing, at Edgewood Road NE, planned to open this week.

The rapidly growing convenience store chain operates around 700 locations in three Midwestern states, with plans to add 42 more in 2019 and invest $2.5 billion in opening 250 to 260 new stores over the next five years, the Wisconsin State Journal reported in April.

The convenience stores typically hire 30 people, including 12 full-time and 18 part-time employees.

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