Preparing the way for a planned Kwik Star store, the Fort Dodge City Council approved vacating a public utility easement to remove a no-longer-needed sanitary sewer at a special meeting Monday.

The 10-foot-wide easement is on the south side of the 3100 block of Fifth Avenue South, where Tobacco Outlet and McGough Construction are currently located.

The vote was made at a special meeting instead of one of the regularly scheduled ones so the buyer and seller for that tract of property could close on the deal soon, said Chad Schaeffer, city director of engineering, business affairs and community growth.

The Fort Dodge Plan and Zoning Commission voted in April to recommend the City Council take this action.

La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip, which owns the Tobacco Outlet chain, has proposed demolishing those two buildings to build a new convenience store there. The existing sanitary main will no longer have any use after the two buildings are demolished.

Schaeffer said he hasn’t been told anything regarding when proposed construction would take place.

“As far as I know, McGough Construction will have to build their new facility and move out, and then Kwik Star could start building.”

Kwik Trip opened a Kwik Star Express store at the corner of Second Avenue North and 15th Street in February. The company later changed that store’s name to Tobacco Outlet Plus Grocery.

Kwik Trip’s stores in Iowa are called Kwik Star to avoid confusion with the QuikTrip chain headquartered in Oklahoma.

Associate City Planner Maggie Carlin told the zoning commission in May that Kwik Star has also proposed a similar store near the intersection of Leah Lane and Triton Plaza on the city’s west side. That location is near the Sleep Inn and across Kenyon Road from Iowa Central Community College.

A second easement farther south was vacated as well. This 10-foot-wide easement was recorded inadvertently when the sanitary main was created in 1973, and does not actually house any sanitary mains.