Iconic Cherry Hill Wawa to Suddenly Close After 50+ Years, Here’s Why
After 50 years, an iconic South Jersey convenience store is closing.
Remember when Wawa stores used to be simple freestanding stores without a big gas station attached to it and a huge parking lot?
Well, one of those final free standing "small" Wawa stores in South Jersey is closing.
In fact, the store marked 51 years in business in Cherry Hill.
The store that's affected? It's the Wawa on the Westbound side of Route 70 near the Kingston neighborhood.
The store will close on October 8, Wawa tells the media.
Though, this isn't as a straight forward as it may seem.
In fact, the closing of this store is a little complicated than that. That is because it was supposed to be replaced by one of those Super Wawa stores nearby.
A super Wawa was proposed to join the Barclay Shopping Center, which is located right across the street, The Inquirer.com reports.
That proposal faced a lot of opposition from the community so it was scrapped nearly two years ago in December 2022, reports from the Inquirer went on to say.
So this week, Wawa issued a statement to the media announcing the plan to close the existing Route 70 store after what they called "extensive evaluation."
So why are they closing it? Well, they say it's because they've determined the store cannot deliver the experience customers deserve or continue to meet performance expectations.
"It clearly had been left in an older state in need of upgrades, which for the longest time made sense considering there had been active plans to develop a replacement Wawa across the street," 42freeway.com writes.
The company has occasionally renovated existing stores. So why not renovate this one?
The statement from Wawa went on to explain that the company ultimately deemed it was not feasible to renovate or relocate this legacy store.
There will now be five remaining Wawa stores in Cherry Hill, by the way, according to the store locator on the company's website.
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