AutoZone coming to Chelsea

Chelsea will soon be home to another automotive store. Retailer AutoZone recently presented a site plan and Overlay District Review.

Mayor Tony Picklseimer said that he hopes by having two choices in the city that will draw more people from out of town and increase sales for the city as a whole.

The store will be located next to Taco Bell on the westbound side of U.S. 280 on 1.16 acres. AutoZone has been around since 1979 and has over 6,300 stores across the United States, Mexico and Brazil and is based in Memphis, Tennessee.

“We have been working on this for almost a year,” said Picklesimer. “They signed a contract with a due diligence period in it to look at what the construction of the site required. We had to work out right of way driveway usage. There were a lot of people involved. It takes a lot of players to put something like this together.”

The roadway that runs in front of that spot, along with Taco Bell and McDonald’s, is considered a service road. City engineer Keith Hager said the county would want to minimize the number of places it intersects with 280, so there would not be an additional way to enter the store from the highway.

The store will meet the requirements of the city’s overlay district and feature a brick and stucco storefront. Hager said the only thing that needed to be changed in the plans was to decrease the height of exterior poles to 14 feet, which is the limit. They were originally set at 20 feet.

The closest AutoZone locations to Chelsea are on U.S. 280 in Inverness and on Pelham Parkway in Pelham. Picklesimer said ground could be broken as early as October 1 and the store open in early 2021.