Two Dunkin Donuts are coming to Fishers and could fill more than our bellies

John Tuohy | IndyStar

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Dunkin' Donuts could give an economic jolt to two slouching commercial strips in Fishers.

The 68-year-old franchise plans to move into the site of the old Jack in the Box on 116th Street and Allisonville Road that closed more than a year ago. The other location would be on the east side of town, at 116th and Brooks School Road, where a Marsh closed recently and has stayed vacant.

The Allisonville Road Dunkin' will be in a strip mall where a Kroger had been set to close but instead will be upgraded. Gabe Schuchman, managing director of Michigan-based developer Alrig, said a deal is in the works for his company to buy the old Jack in the Box and finish construction and open by December.

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Dunkin' media representative Lauen Parke said the shop would be the first “Next Gen” store in Indiana. She declined to provide its specific features, but the company’s website said they'll have express lanes in-store and at the drive-thru for customers who order through the store’s app.

The company rolled out the priority lines in January at its original store in Quincy, Massachusetts.

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The doughnut shop should help shore up retail space at the Fishers Crossing Shopping Center, which appeared to be staggering less than a year ago. That’s when Kroger announced it would close and open a superstore on the east side of Allisonville at Fishers Station mall. The move would have left a vacant big-box store at Fishers Crossing.

But Kroger abruptly dropped plans for the new store and said it would make improvements to the old store instead. That, in turn, has left a huge maw in Fishers Station. Kroger had already torn down the Marsh and laid a concrete foundation when it changed course.

On Fishers' east side, the second planned Dunkin' could give life to Brooks School Plaza. No opening date has been set.

Dunkin has applied for a zoning exception that will allow it to open a drive-thru, which was prohibited when the mall was built in 2003. The developer, Brookschool Plaza, LLP, said retail trends and consumer tastes have changed since then.

“Dunkin Donuts is a great operator with a product line that would be welcomed by the local community,” Brookschool Plaza, LLP, co-owner Jeff Clark wrote in a letter to the city. “With the growth of Amazon and other ‘to your door’ retailers, brick and mortar retail buildings need to be creative and adapt to meet the needs of retail uses.”

Kroger bought the closed Marsh’s lease in 2017, and the building is still empty. Real estate analysts have said Kroger wants to prevent another grocery from moving in for competitive reasons. Complicating its future is an ordinance the city passed after the closure that requires special council permission to build anything except a grocery at the Brook School location in the future.

In 2015, Dunkin Donuts announced plans to add 46 stores in Indiana and to more than double the number of locations nationally from 8,000 to about 17,500.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at 317-444-6418. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.