| By Neil Johnson, reporter/anchor, Big Radio |

A new Kwik Trip’s store planned on Janesville’s Center Avenue will revive a retail block on the south side that’s seen blight and vacancy for years.

Kwik Trip got the go-ahead from the city’s plan commission this week to build a 9,200 square-foot convenience store. It will replace the former Rock County Job Center at 1900 Center Avenue, which has sat empty for the last three years.

City planner Brian Schwiegl says demolition of the 60,000-square-foot Job Center and its replacement with a much smaller Kwik Trip will bring the retail block new commerce, added parking space, plus a facelift via a significant amount of added green space and planned landscaping.

The development also will likely have clearly defined entry and exit lanes for traffic flow in and out of a gas station that developers say could have at least one vehicle per minute entering and exiting the Kwik Trip lot at “peak hours.” That’s an amenity the plan commission indicated it wanted to see added to the site plan.

The new Kwik Trip is planned with a smaller footprint than typical, though, and that’s because it won’t have a liquor store.

Plan commission and city council member Mike Jackson says he wishes Kwik Trip had planned a store that’s as big as one with a liquor section…but with the extra liquor space dedicated instead to more groceries.

The south side hasn’t had a supermarket since 2017, when the Center Avenue Pick n’ Save closed.

The former Rock County Job Center at different times over the last few years had been considered as a potential site for a grocery store. The city of Janesville applied for grants to help aid redevelopment of the site for a potential supermarket, and at one time, county officials were in talks with a Madison-based grocery store chain over the potential of using part of the job center, or the site, for a smaller-format grocery store.

Plan Commission and Council Member Paul Williams echoes Jackson’s thoughts, saying he hopes Kwik Trip has future plans to grow its grocery sales at the future south side location, a move that would address the south side’s ongoing fresh food desert.

Both Williams and Jackson voted ‘yes’ to Kwik Trip’s plan this week in what was a unanimous OK from the plan commission.

The OK help the property’s owner, Rock County, close on sale of the 4-acre parcel to Kwik Trip.

The new Kwik Trip comes in 2025, the company previously told WCLO Radio.