Martin & Bayley has broken ground for a new Huck's Convenience Store at the site of the old Poe Skating Rink at 2700 W. Main St. at the intersection of Main and Halfway Road.
The City of Marion issued their building permit on April 11 for a $1.05 million building. The Carmi-based company which has operated in Marion since at the mid 1970s purchased the property a year ago on May 28, 2015, for $375,000.
This will be the company's fourth store operating in Marion, and it's sixth location used in town.
The firm, named for the late founding partners, Bob Martin and Frank Bayley, dates to 1960 when they began operating supermarkets in small communities across Southern Illinois and eventually expanding into Kentucky and Tennessee. They opened the first Huck's convenience store in Grayville, Illinois, in 1974. Since 2001 the company has been employee owned.
Other than Huck's it was a slow month for building permits in the city. The other major projects include Brokton Webb's $340,000 4-plex at 909 E. Carter St. and Lee Webb's $250,000 project for storage units at 700 N. Main St. The remaining projects are for a double-wide mobile home and two garages.
Overall, the city approved permits totaling $1.783 million in the month of April.
It looks another development will be heading to that area, J. E. Mayer LLC, the corporate owner of the land where Marion Toyota Auto Body operates on Cree Drive, just purchased the vacant Lot 8 immediately to their west this Tuesday, May 3. They paid approximately $3/square foot, or $103,629 for the .79 acre lot on the northeast corner of Cree Drive and Halfway Road.
That's the same price per square foot that Jellen Enterprises paid for slightly larger Lot 15 last Aug. 15, for the new Huddle House restaurant.
