Sheetz plans move ahead at long-vacant Burlington corner site

After more than a decade of stalled plans, the southeast corner of University Drive and South Church Street in Burlington is finally moving toward construction, with permit filings now tied to a new Sheetz gas station and convenience store.

The latest step is a request for work on a concrete foundation pad, a sign that the long-idle parcel is shifting from paperwork to physical site prep. The project sits at one of west Burlington’s highest-profile intersections, where drivers from Twin Lakes, nearby neighborhoods and Highway 70 already funnel through a busy commercial corridor.

The Sheetz proposal is only part of the picture. The buildout is tied to road improvements, traffic-signal work and other infrastructure, including North Carolina Department of Transportation plans to widen Church Street and add a turn lane on the Highway 70 side of the intersection. That makes the project important not just for a gas station operator, but for anyone who uses that intersection daily.

Graham developer Shawn Cummings, working through Venn University, bought the 7.54-acre parcel in 2019 for $2.9 million and has been pushing the site forward since then. The Sheetz store would be the chain’s third in Burlington and its fifth in Alamance County, adding another major brand to a stretch of west Burlington that has seen several retail redevelopments, including Starbucks, Village Grill and other new projects along South Church Street.

The property’s long delay traces back to a much earlier version of the site. Burlington’s conditional zoning has been in place since March 2008, when the city council approved the land for a different commercial concept. At one point, the plan was anchored by an Aldi grocery store. Later, the parcel was linked to developer Ed Tam and an 18-acre shopping center idea near Alamance Crossing, but those plans never materialized.

That earlier development collapsed under financing problems. Related properties tied to Tam were foreclosed on between 2017 and 2019 after he defaulted on millions in bank loans, leaving the corner vacant while the market around it changed.

Cummings has since expanded the broader project. In 2025, he bought the former Burlington Pediatrics property at 3804 South Church Street for $1.875 million, adding another piece to the intersection plan through VennTerra. The city’s planning records now treat the corner as part of a larger redevelopment effort stretching across the University Drive and South Church Street corridor.

For west Burlington, the question now is whether the Sheetz filing marks the start of real construction or just another chapter in a long permit history. With the road work, pad work and site design all moving at once, this version of the plan looks more advanced than the ones that came before it.