Buc-ee’s is coming to North Carolina. Council approves travel center for key interstate

The story was updated on Jan. 10, 2024.

Buc-ee’s will build its first North Carolina travel center after the Mebane City Council voted unanimously early Tuesday morning to permit the project and rezone a 32-acre site.

The council’s 5-0 votes on the rezoning and a special-use permit followed an eight-hour meeting, clearing the way for a mega-size convenience store at Exit 152 off Interstates 40/85.

Mebane was the company’s second attempt to build a North Carolina location after strong community opposition doomed an earlier plan in nearby Orange County. Many of those same residents also fought the plan for Alamance County.

The store approved for 1425 Trollingwood-Hawfields Road, about an hour west of Raleigh, will be less than half the size of Mebane’s Walmart Supercenter. It could open by 2025, according to project documents.

The city’s planning board voted 6-3 in December to recommend denying Buc-ee’s. On Monday, roughly 60 proponents and critics who spoke about the project were equally passionate. Nearly 1,100 people watched the meeting being livestreamed online.

Lucas Babineche, with Common Ground Ecovillage in Mebane, was escorted from the room before the final vote after pleading with council members to look deeper into “a permaculture based, diversified ethanol plant.”

“Some truths here,” Babineche said, as Mayor Ed Hooks gaveled for order. “You can’t eat money. You can’t drink money. You can’t breathe unhealthy air. You can’t put money in a furnace and burn it as energy. I’m so heartbroken because we have converging ecological and social crises, and it’s not a question of a warehouse or Buc-ee’s.”

What are the details?

▪ A 74,000-square-foot convenience store, 120 gas pumps (60 fueling stations) and 652 parking spaces are planned for 32 acres. Neighboring tenants include two UPS facilities, a copper mill, and Lidl, Walmart and Amazon distribution centers.

▪ Greensboro attorney Amanda Hodierne, who represented Buc-ee’s, said the travel center will hire at least 225 full-time workers, pay annual property taxes of $120,300 to the city and county, and bring in about $1.8 million in sales tax revenue.

▪ The company is not getting any city or county economic development incentives, Hooks said.

▪ Buc-ee’s could add up to 1,500 more trips each hour at peak times, and nearly 2,300 trips at peak hours on Saturdays. Buc-ee’s does not serve tractor-trailer trucks.

▪ City staff expect Buc-ee’s to use 23,000 gallons of water a day, compared to 2.1 million gallons a day for existing Mebane customers. The Graham-Mebane Water Plant has a capacity of 6 million gallons a day to serve Mebane, they said.

▪ The project would add three driveways, a 10-foot bike and pedestrian path, and additional traffic lanes and lights on Trollingwood-Hawfields Road, Senator Ralph Scott Parkway, the I-40/85 ramps, and the bridge across I-40/85. The state could extend Lowes Boulevard from N.C. 119 to Trollingwood-Hawfields Road and Senator Ralph Scott Parkway.

Why residents liked the NC plan

Texas-based Buc-ee’s has a a cult following, thanks in part to its Beaver Nuggets, housemade brisket and barbecue, and reportedly the cleanest restrooms in the country.

Mebane resident Shalini Sealey and her husband, Ronnie, were among the project supporters. They recently started a Facebook group and a petition to land Buc-ee’s after seeing opposition online. Their petition had nearly 2,200 signatures by Monday night.

Buc-ee’s will be clean, have a positive economic impact and provide well-paying jobs for the community, Shalini Sealey said.

Ronnie Sealey closed his comments to the council with “Vote yeah for beaver nuggets.”

Mebane resident Ray Oliver also emphasized the need for more tax dollars, especially in light of the county’s $17 million emergency expense this year to remediate mold that kept 25 of the Alamance-Burlington School System’s 37 schools closed until mid-September.

“For the people worried about air quality for children, they’re going to be outside for 20 minutes,” Oliver said. “They’re going to be inside for the rest of the day.”

Residents oppose Buc-ee’s in NC

The benefits won’t outweigh the negative impact on traffic, the environment and town character, opponents said. Over 1,600 people signed a petition opposing the plan sponsored by A Voice for Orange County and the Alamance County-based 7 Directions of Service.

Mebane resident Peter Orton said the council’s vote “will demonstrate to all whether you are mindful of the immense need to move away from fossil fuels or instead choose to promote their expansion.”

“At this critical time in our planet’s history, to now build the largest gas station in the world is profoundly wrong,” Orton said.

Mebane’s industrial and distribution centers already overburden the environment and the city’s infrastructure, said Ayo Wilson, with the West End Revitalization Association, a local community development group.

“When you come to Mebane, you see signs that say ‘Positively charming,’” Wilson said. “Positively charming does not describe the harm that downtown shops and small business owners will experience from this Buc-ee’s. Positively charming does not include Mebane being known as the nation’s travel plaza.”

Others worried about potential harm to historic Native American trading paths that served the Catawba, Occaneechi and Waxhaw. They have been joined by Emily Sutton of Haw River Assembly, who lobbied again Monday for protecting the Haw River and Jordan Lake from stormwater runoff, underground storage tanks and thousands more cars on local roads.

Buc-ee’s officials countered both claims Monday with detailed information about the company’s fuel storage and leak detection system. Hodierne shared a letter from the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources that said a 1997 survey didn’t find any archaeological sites or trading path markers on the site.

Mayor Pro Tem Tim Bradley asked why opponents didn’t raise that history when previous projects were considered.

Kasey Kinsella, with 7 Directions of Service, said Indigenous members of the group, who already had left the meeting because of the late hour, “will tell you that it takes an incredible amount of courage to stand up and identify as Occaneechi-Saponi in this community.”

“There is a history of racial violence against Indigenous peoples and racial suppression,” Kinsella said.

What the Mebane City Council said

Council members also asked about Buc-ee’s traffic and environmental effects, and plans for 24 electric vehicle charging stations.

Council member Katie Burkholder called the company’s pledge to expand EV charging “appealing” and pressed, with other council members, to have traffic improvements in place before Buc-ee’s opens.

“If the traffic for Buc-ee’s doesn’t work, then Buc-ee’s doesn’t work,” said Kimley Horn engineer Earl Llewellyn, representing Buc-ee’s.

Council members Jonathan White and Montrena Hadley scrutinized the company’s employee policies and the poor ratings that some former workers posted in online job boards, despite wages that start at $12 to $14 an hour for entry-level workers.

“I can’t do anything other than to say we have over 10,000 really happy employees,” said Stan Beard, director of real estate for Buc-ee’s.

A lot of the concerns raised about the workforce are “patently false,” Beard said. “We’re proud of what we do, and our workforce is the reason that we are so popular and that we are so successful.”

This story was originally published January 8, 2024 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Buc-ee’s is coming to North Carolina. Council approves travel center for key interstate."

Tammy Grubb

The News & Observer

919-829-8926

Tammy Grubb has written about Orange County’s politics, people and government since 2010. She is a UNC-Chapel Hill alumna and has lived and worked in the Triangle for over 30 years.