Construction on New Wendell Valley Country Store Begins in October

WENDELL, Idaho (KLIX)-Construction on a new Valley Wide Country Store will begin in October on the south side of Wendell. The new store will sit along Interstate 84 at the existing location and will be much larger than the current store. "This will be largest one we've built from the ground up," said Gavin Gregory, vice president of retail for Valley Wide Cooperative. Gregory said the new building will be 24,000 square foot on a little more than seven acres of land. The new Travel Center will function very similar to the current one in Jerome at the I-84 and U.S. Highway 93 interchange. However, the Wendell location will feature their farm retail store.

"We really like being in the Wendell  market. Between a 101-year-old store downtown and a suboptimal size location on I-84 we felt like this was a great opportunity to continue to serve that market and it kinda all made sense," said Gregory. He said the plan is to keep the downtown location open as a convenience store. The new store will feature what Gregory calls a premium pizza shop unique to that location.

Valley Wide acquired the property the old Farmhouse Restaurant use to occupy to expand the site. The location will have truck parking, but Gregory pointed out it will not function as an overnight truck stop. Construction is expected to take about a year before the new store opens up. The current store and fueling stations will close and will be torn down during construction. Valley Wide operates 25 stores across six states.

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