MARIETTA - About six weeks from now, a QuikTrip gas station and convenience store is slated to open at the heavily traveled intersection of South Marietta Parkway and Fairground Street. The city is spending almost $1 million on improvements to the intersection, including widening the parkway to create double left-turn lanes onto Fairground in both directions. But drivers leaving the QuikTrip, either through the Fairground access or on the South Loop side, will be allowed to turn left - or try to, anyway.

"The driveway on to South Marietta is a full access driveway, so technically you could turn left, if traffic allowed you to. With the new double lefts, it would be a difficult turn," city engineer Jim Wilgus told the Journal. "You're not going to have an easy time turning left out of either (driveway). But their deliveries come at off-hours. Also remember, the South Loop is a state road. The permit for that driveway came through GDOT."

About 32,000 cars travel on South Marietta Parkway, also known as the South Loop, at that intersection every day, Wilgus said, citing numbers from the state Department of Transportation. About 19,000 cars travel Fairground Street in that area, he said.

Other improvements at that intersection include dedicated right-turn lanes at all four corners of the intersection, and medians on Fairground Street.

C.W. Matthews is the contractor on the $917,542 project, which is being financed through the special purpose local option sales tax.

City officials hope to have the intersection improvements done by Sept. 29, Wilgus said, "but we've got some utility challenges there." The QuikTrip is slated to open by early October.

City Councilwoman Annette Lewis, whose district includes that area, said the corner with the QuikTrip "will be less dangerous than it currently is," in part because the city has consolidated some curb cuts on both sides.

"The numerous curb cuts on the South Loop in that area is something that should be addressed, and this was our first opportunity to address it," she said. "It's my understanding that you just can't go in and take someone's curb cuts."

Larry Ceminsky, who owns the Bomber Battery outlet further east on the South Loop, is looking forward to the new QuikTrip, which he says will "improve the appearance of that corner," but he does not believe cars should be allowed to turn left out of the gas station onto the South Loop.

"To allow them to turn left onto the South Loop is a very dangerous move, in my opinion. There's so many vehicles backed up to turn left onto Fairground that there's no way they can get across two lanes of eastbound traffic, plus two lanes of traffic waiting to turn," Ceminsky said. "I would make that a right-out-only."

But Ceminsky, who has served on at least one citizen's advisory committee related to traffic congestion in Marietta, also believes the QuikTrip "will be more of a morning drive-time stop," because most commuters are heading east, and the RaceTrac gas station, further east and on the opposite side of the South Loop, will be the afternoon drive-time stop.

Mike Thornbrugh, a spokesman for Tulsa-based QuikTrip, said he did not have access to the anticipated number of vehicles that would go in and out of the convenience store daily. The store will be 4,600 square feet, and the gas station will have 18 pumps.

"We have no concerns about traffic patterns," Thornbrugh said. "QuikTrip is appreciative of the effort by the city. Both parties have worked to develop a plan that should improve the intersection functionally and safely."