Husted spoke with the Dayton Daily News and Springfield News-Sun on Wednesday, touching on Speedway’s future among other topics. Speedway is one of the largest employers in the region. Before the pandemic, Speedway, one of the largest convenience store chains in the country, had as many as 1,200 employees working on the Enon campus and about 40,000 employees nationally.
Convenience store giant 7-Eleven announced in August it had entered into an agreement with Marathon Petroleum Corp. to acquire the Speedway convenience store chain for $21 billion in cash.
7-Eleven was to acquire some 3,900 Speedway stores and gas stations located in 35 states, it was said at the time. Since then, however, there have been reports of 7-Eleven shedding up to 300 of those stores.
Husted said he bases his confidence in the Enon headquarters’ future on “conversations with the principals, with all the people involved with those companies.”
“That’s our hope,” he added. “And we have every reason to believe that’s the case based on our conversations. So that’s good news.”
On Wednesday and Thursday, questions were sent to representatives of Speedway and Marathon Petroleum in Finday. The company didn’t respond.
In a fourth quarter results presentation earlier this month, Marathon said the Speedway sale is progressing.
About a year ago, the Community Improvement Corporation of Springfield and Clark County asked the Ohio Controlling Board to release $700,000 in funding for public roadwork improvements related to Speedway’s expansion of its Enon headquarters.
The plan was to use that money to extend Speedway Drive in Enon by about 900 feet in order to connect it to Dayton-Springfield Road as a way to provide connectivity as well as a second access point to the Speedway headquarters.
“The new building will facilitate the consolidation of remote employees back to Speedway’s Enon campus,” Christian Holfinger, a spokesperson for Speedway, said before the pandemic.
Enon is located about 20 miles northeast of Dayton and about eight miles southwest of Springfield.
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