New convenience store in the works in Ferguson Township. Here’s what to know

A new convenience store could soon be coming to Ferguson Township at the home of a former gas station.

The township’s supervisors unanimously approved the transfer of Drytop Beverages LLC’s class E liquor license at their meeting Tuesday for a convenience store to be located at 913 W. College Ave. in the township’s West College Neighborhood District. The building was formerly the home of a Nittany Minit Mart.

The transfer is from Drytop Beverages’ previously licensed location at 173 E. Main St. in Rebersburg, and will allow for the sale of malt beverages and beer of up to a 12-pack. The license also allows for the sale of these beverages from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Drytop Beverages owner Chris Summers said he believes the store will serve as the “gateway to the township,” though one resident shared concerns during the meeting about increasing the availability of alcohol sales in the immediate area.

There will be no fuel pumps at the convenience store, and Summers hopes that the convenience store will make the surrounding area more walkable and decrease vehicle traffic.

“Having a convenience store where you can go get milk and bread and eggs is part and parcel of having that community be walkable,” Summers said. “There’s nowhere to do that right now that’s walkable, so we think this project lends itself very well to creating that area where residents can walk.”

But Ferguson Township resident Rhonda Stern said that adding another alcohol-selling business so close to the Haus apartment building would only bring unnecessary danger to the Penn State students living there.

She also noted that by the time the convenience store is open, there will already be two alcohol-selling businesses nearby — HiWay Pizza and a soon-to-be-constructed Rutter’s.

“Adding a third outlet for alcohol purchase directly across the street from some 500 college students along this already dangerous corridor is not prudent or safe,” Stern said, reading from a letter that she also sent to the township. “Easy access to alcohol will increase the possibilities of alcohol-related incidents.”

Additionally, Stern said that having three alcohol-selling businesses so close to one another could violate the criteria for a transfer in the township’s liquor license transfer ordinance.

“Granting a liquor license to [Drytop Beverages LLC] will result in three such outlets for the purchase of alcohol, all within one half-a-mile of each other,” Stern said. “’The location of a property line of a new or transferred license shall not be closer than 2,500 feet from the property line of an existing license or transferred license.’ My neighbor measured it, and the distance is 1,700 feet [from the closest alcohol-selling business].”

Supervisor Omari Patterson acknowledged Stern’s concerns, although he said that because of the technical language at the beginning of the ordinance’s “hearing criteria” section, the criteria for a liquor license “may” be considered by the supervisors, not “shall” be.

“When you put words like ‘may’ in [ordinances], it really means that you ‘may’ consider it, it isn’t a ‘shall,’ — ‘shall’ says you must, ‘may’ says you may, ” Patterson said.

Patterson recommended that at some point in the future, he and his fellow supervisors make changes to the ordinance that would leave the liquor license transfer criteria “much more clear and much less subjective.”

An official land development plan for the convenience store has yet to be submitted, but when one eventually is, it will be discussed at a future Ferguson Township meeting, which usually takes place at 6 p.m. on the first and third Tuesdays of the month.