HUBER HEIGHTS — The first Buc-ee’s in Ohio is open for business.
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The Buc-ee’s is on I-70 and state Route 235 in Huber Heights.
The convenience store is 74,000 square feet, and it has more than 100 gas pumps.
“This is nuts. It’s a gas station,” Taylor Carpernter of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The traffic on 235 led to a talk in Carpenter’s car.
“We discussed just turning around. We were like, ‘hey, guys, you want to just drive two hours back home? Or do you want go see what it’s about?’” Carpenter said.
News Center 7 also talked to locals about the gridlock.
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“I think more because of the excitement of that, that is so much traffic today,” Maureen Reed of New Carlisle said.
Reed lives close enough to the new Buc-ee’s to walk there.
“Usually it’s not this much traffic on this street, but I think it’s more the excitement that everybody’s interested in coming to see about it,” she said.
Joey Palmer lives near the store as well.
There was a line of cars crawling by his house on 235 when he stopped by around lunchtime.
“I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time, so I don’t know if I can even get in there right now, but maybe tomorrow, I’ll check it out,” Palmer said.
Kevin Louderback runs a business less than a mile down the road.
“This is a lot of excess traffic for lunchtime. So hopefully it thins out. But for the first week or two it’s going to be busy I guarantee it,” Louderback said.
His biggest concern is workers getting in and out of their lot, but he thinks the increased traffic could help his rental business.
Huber Heights police have been meeting with state troopers and ODOT for months about how to handle increased traffic.
“You try to figure out what you can expect, and you kind of look at the other Buc-ee’s that have opened up in the past and kind of what they saw on their first day and their first week and first month and try to anticipate that,” Sgt. Josh Fosnight with the Huber Heights Police Division said.
Fosnight said the department has a couple of its traffic service units stationed at Buc-ee’s.
Typically, they’d be in other parts of Huber Heights working on traffic issues.
Plus they have officers here on overtime and are getting help from state troopers.
“Some of it will be directing traffic, mitigating some traffic issues, dealing with traffic crashes,” Fosnight said.
Police said they expect it could be “weeks or months” before the traffic dies down.
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