Utah County may soon be getting a Buc-ee’s Family Travel Center — just a few miles away from where a persistent rumor in July said it would go.
The Springville City Council on Tuesday night unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding with the Texas-based retailer. In that memo, the city pledges to build infrastructure — streets, power lines, water and sewer lines — to service the expected 74,000-square-foot store and gas station off of Exit 261 along Interstate 15.
The travel center would bring to Springville some 200 permanent jobs, with starting wages of $18 to $20 an hour, according to Stan Beard, director of development and real estate for Buc-ee’s.
“It’s our first store in Utah, and it belongs here,” Beard told the council. “We’re the fun store. And if this isn’t a fun, family town, I don’t know what is.”
Beard estimated that it would take up to 2½ years for the store to open. It would take nine to 12 months of planning before the first shovel of dirt is moved, he said, and construction would take another 15 to 18 months.
“It will happen quicker than any of us expect,” Beard said.
The Springville location will have 60 fueling positions, or 120 pumps, under four canopies, Beard said. The location will also feature charging stations for electric vehicles.
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“We’ll fill it up with hydrogen if we have to,” Beard said. “We want you into the store. … We are not a convenient stop. People come there on purpose.”
One of the company’s points of pride is the cleanliness of its restrooms. Keeping them clean, Beard said, is one reason the company hires so many people and pays them attractive wages.
“A clean bathroom is easy to keep clean if you never let it get dirty,” Beard said. “We pay our folks well. I am paid well, and I am expected to surpass anybody’s expectations.”
Buc-ee’s boasts 36 locations in Texas and another 18 in 10 other states, mostly in the South. The company opened its first store in Colorado last year and has a second in the planning stages. Utah would be the 11th state outside Texas to be home to a Buc-ee’s.
The chain has an almost cultlike following, CNN reported. “Its devoted fans make regular pilgrimages, sometimes driving hundreds of miles, to stock up on Beaver Nuggets and brisket and merch with its bucktoothed mascot’s smiling face,” the news agency wrote in 2023.
In July, a rumor floated online that said a Buc-ee’s would be built in Spanish Fork, about 5 miles south of Springville on I-15. Spanish Fork tried to quell the rumor in a Facebook post on July 23.
According to the details of the memo, Springville would reimburse Buc-ee’s $625,000 to build a sewer lift station in the area, City Attorney John Penrod told the council. The city and the company would split the costs of road construction, to build new stretches of 1400 North and 1600 West around the travel center. The city also would pay to bore under I-15 to build a water line, and pay to increase water and sewer capacity, and eventually put in a traffic signal.
The total cost to the city has yet to be finalized, Penrod said, but it would be agreed on by both the city and Buc-ee’s.
Beard told the council that “the return on that investment, I promise you, is better than anyone expects.”
The company’s next step will be to work with the Utah Department of Transportation to improve the freeway off-ramp and on-ramp at Exit 261, the northernmost exit in Springville.
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