A Super Wawa store on West Baltimore Pike in Media. More than half of Wawa stores sell gasoline.
Mayor Jim Kenney said last week that it was not a “bad omen” for crime-rattled Philadelphia that Wawa was closing two Center City stores. “We’re really happy with our relationship with Wawa,” the city’s top elected official said.
In Bucks County, where the chain has proposed a Super Wawa with 60 parking spaces and 16 gas pumps, residents had less positive things to say.
The store will “destroy Holland as we know it,” said Pam Duffey, 59, who was leaving a court hearing in Doylestown over the proposal. The Super Wawa would be on 6½ acres near her home, in an area with two-lane country roads. “Holland will never be the same.”
Duffey’s son Brett, 20, a college student, said that if the proposal goes through, “the centerpiece of Holland will be an industrial-sized gas station.”
As Wawa, based in Delaware County, looks to new markets and sources of revenue, the convenience chain has focused on bigger stores with well-lighted, canopy-covered gas pumps and growth areas outside of eastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey. Convenience stores earn 15 cents a gallon, on average, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores. About 80% of the gas purchased in the U.S. is sold by convenience stores.
Wawa has had an on-and-off again relationship with Center City, opening and closing stores over time. The company reinvested substantially beginning in 2015 as Center City boomed with millennials and new housing but has since closed some of those stores.
This fall, Wawa has opened, or will open, six new stores in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and an additional 14 stores in Delaware, Florida, Maryland and Virginia — or a total of 20 new stores, the company’s website says. Even the new store in one of the most urban locations — in Union, N.J., 16 miles outside New York City — has gas.
Wawa spokesperson Lori Bruce said Tuesday in an email that more than half of Wawa stores sell gasoline. The chain also still operates “many without fuel in urban and other areas,” she said.
Shutdowns in Center City
Citing concerns over crime, Wawa said last Thursday that it was closing its stores at 12th and Market and at 19th and Market in Philadelphia. Neither store sells fuel.
The Wawa at 12th and Market is across from the Loews Philadelphia Hotel and in the neighborhood of the Hard Rock Cafe and the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The Wawa at 19th and Market is across from luxury apartments.
“These two particular locations have certain issues that they had to deal with that was costing them money, and it wasn’t really worth it to keep them open,” Kenney said.
Both stores will close Sunday. Employees will be offered continued employment at Wawa, Bruce said.
Other retail brands also have closed stores in Center City. The Starbucks closed at 10th and Chestnut Streets this past summer. Rite Aid has shuttered several Center City stores, one of them only two blocks from the Wawa that will close at 12th and Market.
“Philadelphia has a large, dense population. It should be a good place for store chains. But security is bad, and the city administration doesn’t seem to have a plan for dealing with it,” said Robert Costello, owner of $200 million Costello Asset Management in Feasterville and a close observer of local retail and manufacturing companies.
“In Philly, we take Wawa personally because Wawa started here, and we think of it as our store,” he said. “But Wawa is now approaching 1,000 stores, including 250 in Florida, and now they’re going into North Carolina, and these states where they don’t have real competition and where the state makes it easy for them. They are now so big, they don’t need the aggravation in Philly. That’s how huge Wawa has gotten.”
Suburbanites push back on Wawa expansion
The fight over a new Super Wawa in Holland, which is part of Northampton Township, is among the most recent flare-ups between the company and local residents in the Pennsylvania suburbs and South Jersey.
Residents also are pushing back on a proposed Super Wawa in Newtown Township, a few miles from the one proposed in Holland, and on one proposed for the Barclay Farm section of Cherry Hill.
Bradley Cooper, a Newtown resident (and, no, not the Hollywood actor), said that Wawa “is taking over so many areas.” Newtown Township should support small businesses, he said.
“We always work to follow the processes set forth by local municipalities on new development and community reinvestment,” Bruce said in response to questions about the proposed Holland Super Wawa. “As a proud member of this community for more than a half-century, we believe in working with our friends and neighbors to develop a store that is a true asset to the community.”
Christopher Papa, a New Castle, Pa., lawyer who represents Holland residents opposing the Wawa proposal, said that with a Super Wawa store, the convenience chain “is going for the gas. It’s not fine dining.”
Papa, who specializes in zoning matters, previously helped Western Pennsylvania homeowners battle fracking firms drilling on or near their land.
According to court documents, Northampton Township’s zoning officer concluded that the gas-fueling part of the proposed Super Wawa complex did not constitute a gas station but part of the 24-hour retail convenience store that sold non-fuel merchandise and could be built there under the current zoning.
Residents appealed the decision and are awaiting a decision from Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Denise M. Bowman, who heard the latest arguments on Monday.
The Duffeys say they aren’t opposed to Wawa itself. There has been a legacy Wawa — or one without gas pumps — in the area for many years.
“I always loved Wawa. It’s a local company,” Pam Duffey said. But now she fears “big tanker trucks coming in all hours of the night.”
Staff writer Joseph DiStefano contributed to this article.