After sitting empty for nearly a year, the former 7-Eleven location on Victoria Street in Trail will soon be open and taking customers.
Scott McKelvie is the director of retail operations in Canada for Parkland Fuels, the new operator for the location, and he says work on the gutted building will begin next month.
“We are going to be going ahead now with fixing up the convenience store into a Town Pantry,” he said.
“All plans are in place and we should be starting really soon – next month, in June.”
The work was supposed to start around now, says McKelvie, but some equipment delays have pushed the start date back to June.
Town Pantry is the name of the convenience stores that accompany most Chevron gas stations in Canada. There are already locations open in Cranbrook and Castlegar.
As for why the building sat empty for so long?
“It was just about finalizing some details,” said McKelvie.
He says the location, once work is finished, will have all of the usual offerings of a gas station convenience store with snacks, drinks, a lotto centre, cigarettes and more.
One unknown about the future of the location is the store's hours, and McKelvie says it is too early to tell. The 7-Eleven that previously occupied the location was open for gas and supplies 24 hours-a-day.
When the 7-Eleven shut its doors in June 2014, there wasn't a concrete plan for the space. Adrien Byrne, a media contact with Chevron, said at the time, the company was looking for an operator to take over the location, but didn't have any takers yet. Since then, the gas station has been operated from a small portable in the parking lot where customers can pay for gas and grab a bottle of pop.