CRANBERRY TWP — A new larger Sheetz gas station and convenience store may replace the current one on Freedom Road.

Conceptual plans, unveiled Monday to the township planning advisory commission, would place the larger store on vacant land next to the current building.

The Sheetz on Freedom Road is in tight space that wouldn’t be permitted to be developed under current township ordinances.

The business is popular which often makes traffic flow in the parking lot and at the gas pumps hectic.

Ron Henshaw, Cranberry director of community development, said the new business would have a 65,059-square-foot building, about twice the size of the current building, and a new car wash.

Henshaw said Sheetz leases its current building from J.J. Gumberg, operators of the Cranberry Mall. All the equipment including signs, storage tanks and equipment would be removed from that site.

“It will be up to the mall owners what will be done with the site once Sheetz moves,” he said.

Henshaw said the developer could bring formal plans and a conditional use application for the new Freedom Road Sheetz before the planning advisory commission as early as next month.

The new Sheetz site, across from the Cranberry Mall on Freedom Road, had been approved in 2008 for a Rite Aid pharmacy.

An beer distributorship previously occupied the that property before it was torn down several years ago.

Meanwhile, the status for a second Cranberry Sheetz store, which has been approved at the corner Ehrman Road and Route 19, remains in limbo.

Plans for the Sheetz convenience store and three flex warehouse/office buildings were approved in June by the township supervisors.

The development, Century Business Park, includes the 4,997-square-foot convenience store/gas station and three buildings totaling 74,700 square feet of flex office space on 18 acres at Ehrman Road and Route 19.

No work has been done there.

Henshaw said attempts by the township to contact the developers, Sampson-Morris Group of Monroeville, about their plans have gone unanswered, leaving the township in the dark about the development.

A call to Michael Morris, president of Sampson-Morris Group, by the Butler Eagle was not returned.

That property was originally approved about a decade years ago for an office park, but that was never built.