Written by: Hayden Kobza
On Jan. 23, 2025, Advance Auto Parts had its grand opening for business at Four Corners in Collegedale, according to store worker Hunter Landell and a Facebook post. The auto parts store is located in a building that once held a Rite Aid pharmacy.
Christian Patino, an alumnus of Southern Adventist University who lived in the area from 2004 to 2020, said he thinks having new businesses come in will attract others. He used restaurants as an analogy to explain that once one business starts to attract a lot of customers, other investors will want to do the same.
“[The more] business starts coming, more interest grows in this plaza,” Patino said. “I think at the end, the citizens, the ones who live close [are the ones] who win, which I think it’s good for them. I think it’s a good thing overall, instead of it being like an empty building for so long, for so many years.”
Collegedale resident Jeremy Beasley believes that having an auto parts store in the heart of the city is an excellent development for the area.
“I think it’s a good idea, a good location,” Beasley said. “We’ve broken down over at the park before, so it’s nice that something’s in walking distance.”
Beasley explained that with the growth of the parks nearby and the growth of the city itself, the auto parts store is in a central location.
“You don’t just see an empty, vacant building, which [was] a bad reflection on the city itself,” Beasley said.
Community leader David Barto, director of the Collegedale Tomorrow Foundation (CTF), wants to see the Four Corners area grow larger than just the addition of the Advance Auto Parts. In October 2023, Barto told the Accent that his foundation’s vision for the area included a “retro makeover” that would convert strip shops into complexes, add trees and extend pathways and benches.
“It would look like you are driving into an old-town square,” Barto said in the article.
He said having a new business is better than an empty building, even if it doesn’t line up with his original plan.
“I can’t make the property owners bulldoze their building,” Barto said. “The plan was a concept of what was possible. Until the owners of the property say we want to tear everything down and do that, that’s the limits of my abilities to do anything.”
Barto believes the store will attract more companies to the area, since the City of Collegedale might not, at first glance, seem like a winning proposition for potential business investors. He explained that because the 37363 ZIP code covers such a large area, the population density seems very low, making it look like very few people live close to Four Corners. Only businesses that take a closer look begin to understand that the ZIP code, which covers unincorporated Ooltewah, does not closely coincide with Collegedale city limits, said Barto.
“Because stores use each other’s sales as a way to factor in if they want to move to an area …, if they can make money, then that’s going to tell other stores that they can come here and do the same,” Barto said.
