Fort Mill’s next fast food hot spot is coming. Here’s what to expect there

An area of Fort Mill long starved for restaurant options could soon transform into one of its busier spots to grab a bite. Especially for the fast-food crowd.

Recent plans paint possibilities, potentially for a Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s beside each other and multiple grocery store strip malls with new restaurants around Fort Mill Parkway. Properties within eyesight of one another have approval or submitted plans for eight to 10 new restaurants. Plus retail space that could add more still.

It’s all in an area that didn’t have a road through it a decade ago.

Fort Mill Parkway restaurants

This fall, town planners received a proposal for 5 acres on the eastern corner of Fort Mill Parkway and Holbrook Road. Among retail plaza plans shown in that rezoning proposal were a 7,500-square-foot drive-thru restaurant and a 7,200-square-foot “high turnover” sit-down restaurant.

A traffic study submitted with the plan shows a different configuration, with two smaller fast food restaurants, each with a dual lane drive-thru, and two separate retail buildings that each show a new restaurant.

New restaurants and retail planned near Harris Teeter property along Fort Mill Parkway

That traffic study also showed a separate development across Fort Mill Parkway with three buildings. One of them appears to have a two-lane drive-thru. The traffic study notes that separate development is approved for two restaurants.

The study also notes the nearby but separate Arden Mill neighborhood is approved for another restaurant along the parkway. Then, there are the much larger nearby commercial developments with Harris Teeter and Crossroads.

Both plans are working their ways through the town approval process now. Harris Teeter has a combined 47-acre plan on the parkway at North Dobys Bridge Road known as Catawba Ridge Market, across from Holbrook Road. Crossroads is a short walk away at North Dobys and Williams Road, a little off the parkway.

Harris Teeter plans include a grocery store, retail and commercial space with two fast food restaurants and a sit-down restaurant. An October meeting between the developer and town planners to update a traffic study there included documents that appear to list the fast food sites as a Chick-fil-A and a McDonald’s. Documents don’t list a name for the sit-down restaurant.

The latest plans are in for that new Harris Teeter on Fort Mill Parkway — with changes

The Crossroads project would add a new grocery store and a significant amount of retail shopping center space. Initially the minimum retail amount was 239,500 square feet, but developers now want to drop that minimum to 147,500 square feet. Plans don’t show restaurants but they’re common in grocery store shopping centers throughout the area.

Less business, more apartments. See the changes for a major new Fort Mill development

Fort Mill’s restaurant gap

Visit York County lists more than 500 restaurants in the county, with about 70% of them in either Rock Hill or Fort Mill. Of the more than 140 listed Fort Mill restaurants there’s only one — Blue Bar & Smokehouse — on Fort Mill Parkway.

There are two dessert spots in Smallcakes and Sweet Frog on the parkway as well.

Most restaurants are on the U.S. 21, S.C. 160 or Interstate 77 corridors, or within large, mixed-use areas like Kingsley, Baxter, Stonecrest or Brayden. Or they’re downtown, on or near Main Street.

Visit York County lists 19 fast food restaurants in Fort Mill, a number that includes some spillover to the Indian Land area. The nearest fast food to Fort Mill Parkway was the Hardee’s on Tom Hall Street, before that downtown spot just off Main Street closed this spring. Now the nearest are in the Baxter and Indian Land areas.

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There aren’t any fast food restaurants on the Visit York County listing east of I-77 and south of the U.S. 21 and Old Nation Road intersection, in the more historic and downtown areas. New Fort Mill Parkway plans could put four or more there.

Why Fort Mill Parkway?

Most fast food restaurants in the area are concentrated along the interstate. Rock Hill has Cherry Road. The Carowinds corridor in unincorporated Fort Mill, the Gold Hill Road area near Tega Cay and both Kingsley and Baxter off S.C. 160 all sit just off major exits.

The Fort Mill Parkway properties don’t. The Holbrook Road and Fort Mill Parkway intersection sits about 4 miles from the nearest interchange, at I-77 and Sutton Road.

Yet Fort Mill Parkway carries more traffic than most non-interstate stretches in the region. South Carolina Department of Transportation traffic counts show more than 14,000 vehicle trips per day use the parkway on average, peaking at almost 17,000 daily trips as it reaches Holbrook.

SCDOT data shows Rock Hill region has state’s most heavily traveled stretch of road.

In recent years the parkway corridor also has been something of a blank canvass for development just off areas that have been built up over a century or more of activity.

The full Fort Mill Parkway from Spratt Street to Springfield Parkway only opened in 2016. An initial stretch of it from Spratt to Holbrook opened in 2014. Since then, there have been schools, new neighborhoods and retail areas popping up all along the parkway.

With the Elizabeth, Waterside and Massey communities all set for buildout at well more than 1,000 residences each, business continues to follow rooftops.

The parkway isn’t the only fast food growth area in town.

There’s the recent addition of Bojangles at I-77 and Sutton Road. The owner of House of Fireworks at 3474 U.S. Hwy. 21 near Carowinds applied this summer to rezone its 3-acre site to allow construction of two new fast food restaurants with drive-thru service. Yet it’s the concentration of projects along the parkway that’s new.

There’s also reason to expect more.

The commercial portion of Elizabeth, along the parkway and Spratt Street, has more than 80 acres in various stage of sale, development or listing.

South Mill at Elizabeth is under construction with storage unit company The Vault Fort Mill, adult daycare Town Square and Riccobene Associates Family Dentistry already signed. Another piece of property already sold for 300 apartments. Properties there allow for new restaurants, along with retail centers that often include restaurants.

The Elizabeth commercial sites are much closer to the interstate. They sit about a mile from the Sutton Road interchange.