The Sizzler restaurant in Cottonwood is closing its doors for good on Sunday, Nov 1.
Maverik, a Utah-based gas station and convenience store chain, is interested in opening at the store’s location on the southeast corner of State Route 260 and State Route 89A, said Rick Rosenzweig, a commercial real estate agent with Sound Investments who has been working with the property for months.
Maverik already has two locations in the Verde Valley, one in Cottonwood at the intersection of Mingus Avenue and State Route 8A and another in Camp Verde off of Finnie Flat Road.
The Camp Verde location recently underwent a large renovation, updating design and making better use of space. If Maverik opens another location at the site of the Sizzler in Cottonwood, it will be bigger, Rosenzweig said.
“Maverik makes most of its money from the things they sell inside the store,” Rosenzweig said.
To that end, Maverik has been focusing on expanding that end of the business by incorporating services like delis. Rosenzweig said he’s been talking to a developer that wants to build a Maverik that the convenience store company can use.
It’s still too soon to say if the Maverik plan with be carried out, Rosenzweig said. The sale of the property hasn’t closed yet and Rosenzweig said that Maverik would have to work out other issues with the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Under current ADOT rules, only right-turn entrances and exits would be permitted. A Maverik gas station would be limited in the types of traffic access it could allow, and Rosenzweig said Maverik needs more than that in order to run a store like it would want.
“It’s not a done deal,” Rosenzweig said.
Rosenzweig said he had originally hoped to bring another restaurant to the site.
“Restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster have their own in-house architects,” Rosenzweig said. Those companies would prefer to tear the existing restaurant building down and build a new one, Rosenzweig said, and they weren’t willing to pay the price the owners want for the property.
Maverik does seem willing to pay the price, Rosenzweig said, but it’s likely the building would also be torn down in that case.
The 5,940 square-foot restaurant was built in 1991 and sits on 1.44 acres. The Sizzler grossed an average of $1,150,000 per year for the last 10 years, according to Rosenzwieg’s property listing, but “under an absentee operator whose heart has not been in it.”
Maverik has already approached the city of Cottonwood for initial meeting about the company’s plan, said Charlie Scully, city long-range planner.
That meeting was fairly standard with the city’s code review board, Scully said.
“It was mainly about things like distances from the curbs and safety,” Scully said. “It’s really in [Maverik’s] court now to get the approval from ADOT.”
Scully said that Maverik had also brought up plans to purchase property from Verde Valley Medical Center in order to potentially expand its existing Cottonwood location.
