Old Shoney’s comes down, QuikTrip prepares to build

By Randy Bell

A Clinton eyesore is no more. The vacant Shoney’s restaurant at I-20 and Springridge Road was demolished last week to make way for a new business – a QuikTrip convenience store and gas station.

“That’s going to be a really exciting and fresh look for that part of the interchange,” said Mayor Phil Fisher.

The Shoney’s closed in 2020. The Clinton restaurant was torn down about three weeks after the old Shoney’s near the State Fairgrounds in Jackson was also demolished.

The QuikTrip project in Clinton was first announced in early 2021, but construction was delayed.

“We made a corporate decision to wait until we had a package of several stores we could build at one time utilizing the same general contractor,” said Aisha Jefferson-Smith, QuikTrip’s corporate communications manager in Tulsa. “It just made more sense for us to do it that way,” she said.

QuikTrip says construction typically takes twenty-six to thirty-six weeks. The projected opening date is April 27, 2023.

The Clinton store originally was planned as the first QuikTrip in Mississippi, but the company says a store in Byram will open three weeks before the one in Clinton. Other QuikTrips are in the works in Vicksburg, Gautier and Winona.

“I’ve made it a point when I’m traveling to look for these [stores] and stop and check them out,” Fisher said. “And they’re pretty neat.”

The Clinton store, which will operate 24/7, is expected to create twenty to twenty-five jobs. QuikTrip currently operates more than 900 locations in sixteen states.

In other business developments in Clinton, Arby’s, which is planning to build a restaurant on Highway 80 at the site of the old Bumper’s Drive-In, is getting its contractor information together for permitting, according to the City of Clinton’s director of communications and tourism, Amanda Mills Jones. The Waffle House on Springridge Road hopes to begin work on an expansion and renovation of the restaurant in August, Jones said.