Some prime corner real estate has been available for months now at the corner of MLK and Parsons.

Remember the long-dormant gas station that reopened for a year - the one where the employees looked at you with cool hatred at being interrupted from their personal phone calls, and where gas was 15 cents a gallon more than the local RaceTrac on any given day?

I guess enough of us voted with our dollars and sent them into oblivion; it’s been roped off for months now. This is right next to the Burger King that’s been boarded up for two years.

My wife and I have been thinking (assuming that the lots were razed and combined) how appropriate a Sonic or a Chick-Fil-A would be.

Unfortunately, a sign went up recently, meekly announcing a CVS drug store.

This will be great for late-night Ben & Jerry’s cravings, but is another chain drug store the best use of this corner lot?

Imagine the kick in the pants that our complacent McDonalds and Checkers would have felt as hundreds lined up for waffle fries, chicken nuggets and styrofoam soft drink cups that stay cool for 2 hours.

I guess I should be just happy it’s not another freakin’ AMSCOT.

This past weekend, I noticed a salvage company’s truck pulled up to the vacant Burger King, and a seemingly related ladder leaning against the adjacent gas station’s roof. I assume they were removing any resaleable objects or scrap materials in preparation for the old wrecking ball.

Yesterday, when driving past, I observed that both buildings had been partially demolished. The BK was a heap of rubble, with only the little wall that used to hide the dumpsters still standing. The north side of the gas station was caved in.

Without thinking, I uttered a triumphant “YEAH!” as I remembered the rudeness of the gas station’s employees and the outrageously noncompetitive pricing of their gas.

Seeing the collapsed BK was, admittedly, a little sad. I remembered their eternally greasy floors (where mopping just seems to spread it around) and the Whopper Jr. meals I’d occasionally bought there from 1991 to 2004. The last time I went there was when we were craving onion rings, I’m sure.

I wish I’d been there to see the machine operator take the first stab at the gas station. When I drive by again today, what will be there - a taller heap of rubble, or an ominously cleared lot?

Won’t clouds of dust and asbestos infiltrate the neighboring Taco Bell and end up contaminating someone’s Carne Asada Taquito?

Though crickets are chirping loudly in this thread, I thought I’d post an update.

I was going to post last week that absolutely NOTHING has been going on at the site except profuse weed growth.

However, I returned from out of town this weekend to see some promising signs. Several construction vehicles (two bulldozers? an earthmover? I was trying to survive the intersection!) are arrayed across the site, and a small trailer/office now sits in the southeast corner, near Colonial Bank.

Taco Bell’s drive-through cashiers may soon find their unobstructed view of the rival McDonalds a mere memory.

I’ll post more progress as I observe it - if not for the raving fans of this popular thread, then as a diary of sorts for myself (and many crickets) to reflect upon later.

Huge mounds of earth, crawling with machines, and a rather deep pit on the Taco Bell side… are they building a CVS or installing an underground bunker?

I agree wholeheartedly with your desire to see a Chik Fil-A or Sonic go up in the Seffner area, especially in the Parsons/MLK wasteland.  I’d even be happy to see a Starbucks, Arby’s, Moe’s or Steak and Shake.

Sadly, Seffner keeps getting passed over by all the tastiest franchises. Why? I’d bet that much of the supposed “market research” that franchisers like CFA and Sonic have used to pass up the Seffner area is based on years-old demographic data. 

Look, everybody.  Seffner is growing and is rapidly becoming more affluent and progressive.  Certainly there are more savvy business people who would enjoy raking in some green from our area besides the AMSCOTS and ABC Liquors, but I guess we’ll have to wait until our demographics are updated through the next census.

Until then, I suppose we can simply watch the CVS move from the strip-mall to a free-standing building.  How exciting.

You bring up a great point that I am embarrassed to have forgotten about… THERE ALREADY WAS/IS A CVS in Seffner, not 300 yards away in the Winn-Dixie shopping center.

I live south of MLK and somehow never venture over to that center, since the Sweetbay/Blockbuster/Taco Bell/Colonial Bank/Young Bin combination is hard to beat.

Also, good point about the demographics. If they could put a Quizno’s in Mango, why can’t we get more interesting franchises? Maybe on the dirt lot where the Eleven Mile Tavern stood until recently?

I’m curious as to how the building is going to sit on the lot. The Eleven Mile Tavern was bulldozed because there are plans in the works to widen 574, and they couldn’t clear much on the north side due to the cemetary at 574 and Taylor Rd. I would imaging the CVS will have to sit a ways back from the road, but will still have limited parking. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Good point about the road widening.

This morning as I commuted from that corner, down MLK to I-75, I tried to imagine the widening and how it would impact existing businesses on the south side of the road.

Even if the CVS is built pretty far back from the road, the neighboring Taco Bell is pretty close already. I don’t see how they could keep their drive-through exit and front parking area in that event.

I wonder if the point of the widening is to (hopefully) eliminate the bottleneck at Highview, where drivers suddenly realize there’s only one through lane and dart to the left in front of those who got in line before the RaceTrac?

UPDATE

Work is beginning in earnest. Giant stacks of cement block, reddish bricks and bags of masonry cement line the perimeter closest to the MLK/Parsons intersection.

Those metal rods with plastic colored caps appear to outline the foundation (hard to see when driving carefully).

Dump trucks and a crane were obvious this morning, but there’s probably a lot more equipment and workers I didn’t see.

We’re one step closer to Stand-Alone CVS-ness.

Tall walls have taken shape. Progress is rapid.

CVS is shooting for the Kwikee-Mart shoppers on SSRI’s.

The CVS is a concrete bunker now, with an identifiable drive-through window hole on the Taco Bell side and a gaping hole in front for the windows and facade.

I wonder how parking will be… surely it will spill over into the largely unused parking wasteland between Colonial Bank and Taco Bell… and how traffic exiting CVS will complicate matters at the intersection.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. The building is painted, has glass in its windows and bears a CVS logo.

I hope they’re at work inside, installing the freezer that will soon house my ice cream.

The electronic sign has been up for a week or more, and there appears to be progress on the interior, but I still don’t know when the new CVS is supposed to open.

I wonder if their sale ads mention ithe date. I doubt it, because they’re printed in such large quantities per region and might not concentrate much on one store opening.

The New CVS in Seffner will be opening January 27th.

Any questions please feel free to post and I will do my best to answer them…

Eric Cantin
CVS/Pharmacy
Store Manager

Sorry suckers. Go tell the county commission.