It will be a little longer before Northeast Texans can roll into Royse City for some minor-league baseball and grab a bag of beaver nuggets on the way home. A proposed baseball stadium scheduled to begin operations next summer has pushed that date to 2019. And a planned Buc-ee’s convenience store location has bumped its opening from 2019 to 2020.
Improvements along Interstate 30 in Royse City must be completed before the huge trucks toting construction vehicles and materials can access the building sites, Royse City council member Thomas Crowley told the Royse City Herald-Banner.
The frontage roads along both sides of the highway are being redone, along with upgrades to the interstate itself. The improvements along I-30 are part of a large project updating the highway and its feeders from Garland to Greenville. Drivers in Rockwall County have been subject to intermittent slow-downs and delays since the project’s inception.
The baseball stadium is a joint venture between the Royse City Independent School District and private developer Mark Schuster. The master plan for the site includes retail stores as well as a 2,000-seat, $12 million ballpark that will house both local school teams and the Royse City Griffins, a team in the independent professional Southwest League of Professional Baseball, which is being organized but has yet to begin play. Schuster is due to seek an extension on his memorandum of understanding with the Royse City Community Development Corporation next month.
Buc-ee’s, a regionally renowned chain of behemoth-sized travel stops, currently has 24 locations, all in Texas. The stores are noted for their myriad gas pumps (the Royse City locations is slated to have 75) and wide selection of travel souvenirs and food, including various types of jerky and beaver nuggets, a sweet corn snack named after the company’s aquatic rodent mascot. Most Buc-ee’s locations are in Southeast and Central Texas, though there are two North Texas stores, in Terrell and in far north Fort Worth.
