Road widening shutters some businesses while others plan relocation
Speedy’s Barbecue owner Roy Dunn said he plans to relocate the iconic restaurant due to a Winston Road widening project slated for 2023. {Vikki Broughton Hodges/Davidson Local}
While several businesses along Winston Road in Lexington have already closed or soon will due to a road widening project, the owners of Speedy’s Barbecue and Hayes Jewelers plan to relocate and remain open.
“We’re definitely relocating — not closing,” assured Roy Dunn, owner of Speedy’s Barbecue at 1317 Winston Road. “If I can relocate like I want to, we’ll have very little downtime — no big gap in when we reopen.”
Dunn said his son and daughter and two grandchildren work at the restaurant and are among about 30 employees in the third-generation eatery that has participated in the annual Barbecue Festival since that event started in 1984.
“I’m trying to look after my family, my employees and my customers,” he explained.
Dunn has owned the restaurant since 1970, when he named it Speedy’s Barbecue. But he noted the original part of the building dates back to 1946 when it was a sandwich shop, then Tussey’s Drive-In from 1948 to 1962 and later Speedy’s Drive-In from 1963 to 1970. He began his restaurant career in 1963 as a “curb boy,” serving customers in their cars when it was owned by Paul Lohr.
“It’s always been known for good food and service,” he noted.
Bruce Hayes, owner of Hayes Jewelers at 903 Winston Road, also plans to relocate the store founded in 1939 by his late father, Delmar Hayes. But he won’t be moving too far.
Hayes Jewelers owner Bruce Hayes will build a new store on property adjacent to this building, which will be torn down for the road widening project. {Vikki Broughton Hodges/Davidson Local}
“This whole block belongs to me,” he said of the block at the intersection of Ninth Street and Winston Road. “I’ll just put a new building in the middle of it and stay as close to the street as I can for visibility.”
The new building will be one story with roughly the same square footage as the current one and include an apartment for Hayes like he has now. “It will be a little more modern and streamlined,” he said of the structure.
One business, SN Food Market at 1009 Winston Road, will not have to relocate because it is far back enough from the street. But the Citgo gas pumps out front near the road will have to be removed.
Lovleen Kaur and Ragunesh Kumar have owned the gas station and convenience store since 2013. The couple sells a popular line of Cajun-style “Krispy Krunchy Chicken” from their kitchen in addition to the convenience store foods.
“We’ll lose about 40 percent of our business without the gas sales,” she lamented. “But people really like the chicken. It’s going to be hard but we’ve learned to survive.”
The Mobil gas station at 1401 Winston Road closed earlier this year and a nearby Family Dollar store closed a couple of years ago when the road widening project was originally scheduled to begin.
Sonic Drive-In at 1301 Winston Road, which opened in 2001, will close by the end of March, according to Charlie Lohr, managing partner for the Sonic franchises in Lexington and Thomasville. He said there are currently no plans to open another restaurant in the city so customers craving a cherry limeade, double cheeseburger or Oreo Blast will have to drive to Thomasville. A second location on Highway 8 closed several years earlier.
The N.C. Department of Transportation project to widen Winston Road from two to four lanes from Ninth Street to Biesecker Road includes sidewalks, bike lanes, grass strips, new curbs and gutters and a 17.5-foot-wide median. The NCDOT is still negotiating with some property owners for rights-of-way on the east side of Winston Road. The project, currently scheduled to begin in July 2023, is designed to alleviate traffic congestion on a major entrance into the city. The average daily traffic in 2016 was between 15,000 and 18,000 vehicles, according to the NCDOT. The widening project would increase capacity to more than 24,000 vehicles per day.
