Here Comes Scooters

Future Site

A Scooters coffee shop will be coming to Lamar in the near future. “I think it will be up in under 90 days, perhaps seven to eight weeks, once they get going,” remarked Dale Willhite of Holly, the owner of the new franchise.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Friday morning, April 1^st at the parking lot due south of the Cow Palace Inn. Scooters will be situated basically off the intersection of North Main Street and a new road being constructed, called Sword Street. The new roadway will run west from North Main and will be located between the Lamar Inn and Cow Palace Inn. This is also a location for a proposed tentative motel which will operate under the Cobblestone Inn banner.

Willhite said he had been thinking of opening a non-franchise coffee shop for a number of years, adding, “I just thought that it’s going to be now or never, so I started investigating various franchises and decided on Scooters.” He said during the groundbreaking ceremonies that there are plans for developing three more coffee shops with two in Pueblo and one proposed for Canon City, but he didn’t lay out any timeline for those operations. The store will be constructed as a drive-thru operation with traffic coming off North Main Street and accessing the business from Sword Street.

A host of officials from the city and county were on hand along with Lamar Mayor Kirk Crespin, City Administrator, Steve Kil, Ron Cook, Prowers County Commissioner and Lamar Light Plant Superintendent, Houssin Hourieh along with several other department heads and Prowers Economic Development (PEP) Executive Director, Cheryl Sanchez. Tom Allen, Franchise Business Consultant for Scooters said he was certain the new operation would develop into a long term relationship with the community.

By Russ Baldwin