HOLLY, MI — The vacant Wendy’s on Grange Hall Road will be demolished to make way for a second Taco Bell, finally providing the additional taco capacity residents have demanded since the first location opened.
Plans call for the second location to share a parking lot with the first while offering an identical menu, allowing drivers who miss the original entrance to immediately enter another Taco Bell without making the dangerous journey back onto Grange Hall Road.
Officials said the redundant restaurant system would also protect Holly from catastrophic interruptions caused by long drive-thru lines, equipment failure, or one location temporarily running out of Baja Blast.
“One was never going to support this market,” said regional fast-food infrastructure consultant Dennis Harcourt. “Holly has always been a two-Taco-Bell town. It simply lacked the courage and zoning capacity to admit it.”
Residents recalled construction of the original Taco Bell as a formative civic experience.
“We tracked that construction more closely than most people track their children,” said local resident Greg Pritchard, who mistook a contractor’s parked truck for a soft opening on four separate occasions. “The night the interior lights came on, my wife and I sat in the parking lot for an hour. We didn’t talk.”
Developers have not announced an opening date, ensuring the project will continue generating speculation, anticipation, and at least one man loudly explaining that the building used to be a Wendy’s.
Officials declined to comment on rumors that a third Taco Bell could eventually replace the Tim Hortons across the street, creating what planners described as a fully self-sustaining taco corridor.