Wawa breaks ground on first Indiana store
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With a goose mascot parading around and an airplane flying overhead with a banner, Pennsylvania-based Wawa Inc. broke ground Thursday on its first convenience store and gas station in Indiana.
The store at 3835 E. 96th St., formerly the location of The Claddagh Irish Pub, is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2025.
Wawa officials also confirmed work will begin this year at six other locations in Indiana: 5550 W. 86th St. in Indianapolis; 2701 Westfield Road in Noblesville; 8 W. 176th St. in Westfield; 60 E. Gamer Road in Brownsburg; 5957 W. U.S. 40 in Cumberland; and 1354 Veterans Parkway in Clarksville.
The convenience store chain plans to open three additional Indiana locations next year. Over the next five to eight years, Wawa aims to open eight to 12 stores per year in Indiana with plans for a total of 60 stores in the state.
“For us, it was just a good natural expansion for us out of Pennsylvania, certainly a continuous supply chain out of our Pennsylvania markets,” Wawa Chief Real Estate Officer John Poplawski told IBJ. “The welcoming environment we got from the city officials really made us feel that this was business-friendly and a place where we can succeed.”
Wawa has more than 1,000 locations across eight states and Washington, D.C. The retail convenience stores offer built-to-order food such as hoagies and breakfast sandwiches, beverages, coffee drinks, and, in a majority of locations, gasoline.
Wawa, founded in 1964, employs more than 45,000 people overall. The company began opening stores with gas stations in 1996.
The convenience store chain has a cult-like following, and about 100 VIP customers attended Thursday’s groundbreaking, creating a party atmosphere.
“Wawa!” one man shouted with a mouthful of sandwich as he hoisted his hoagie into the air.
Wawa currently has 23 sites under contract in Indiana across Clark, Dearborn, Delaware, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Madison, Marion, Scott, Tippecanoe and Wayne counties.
Each store will represent an approximately $7.5 million investment and have about 35 employees. The company plans to employ about 2,000 people in Indiana.
Mathias Smith, the company’s manager of real estate, told IBJ that Wawa needed to introduce itself to community leaders and planners, but he said 30% of the Midwest already knows about the chain.
“When we announced this market, we had a huge outpouring of people just begging us to come to their city or their location,” Smith said.
Wawa’s Noblesville store will be at the $72 million, 34-acre Midland Pointe development at the southeast corner of State Road 32 and Hazel Dell Parkway, which is a joint venture between Indianapolis-based Secure Holdings LLC and Carmel-based Old Town Cos. LLC.
The Westfield location will be at Spring Mill Centre, which was previously the site of the FabCon Precast concrete facility at 17701 Spring Mill Road.
One community, Greenfield, passed an ordinance earlier this year against building new convenience stores and gas stations on the city’s north side after Wawa announced it had a location under contract at North State Street and West New Road.
Greenfield City Council member Dan Riley told IBJ in April that the ordinance was not directed at Wawa. He said the ordinance “was a general thing that we felt that we were amply served by the 16 or 17 gas stations we have.”
“We just feel like that we’re amply served right now,” Riley said. “A gas station generates an awful lot of traffic. And we were concerned about that.”
In Avon, a planned Wawa store has been the subject of a zoning debate with some residents and town officials concerned about traffic, noise and the potential impact on surrounding property values. The Avon Advisory Plan Commission will continue discussing the proposed Wawa store at its meeting in June.