A vacant lot at the northwest corner of Montwood Drive and John Hayes Road in East El Paso is set to become the site of a new Circle K, complete with a 5,200-square-foot convenience store and a 14-pump fueling canopy. The $3 million project, filed by applicant Karla McCommon of Dallas-based The Dimension Group, would sit near Eastwood High School and Green Family Dental, just down the road from an existing Circle K at Montwood and Yarbrough drives.
According to the El Paso Times, the property is owned by Ranchos Real Investment Properties LLC, and project plans call for a trash enclosure alongside the new store and pumps. The city website does not yet list a contractor for the build, the paper reports, though the project has already been registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation under project ID TABS2026023928 with a $3.3 million valuation, according to Zabalist. Ranchos Real Investment Properties has also been active elsewhere on the Eastside, having engaged the El Paso City Plan Commission on mixed-use projects including Tierra Del Este Unit One in City District 5, per city records.
A Brand That Started With Three El Paso Grocery Stores
The new location represents something of a homecoming. Circle K traces its roots to El Paso in 1951, when Fred Hervey bought three Kay's Food Stores in the city, according to the El Paso Times report and the El Paso County Historical Society. Hervey was no ordinary grocer — he served two separate terms as El Paso's mayor, first from 1951 to 1955 and again from 1973 to 1975, per the historical society's records.
By 1975, the chain had grown to 1,000 stores across the U.S., the El Paso Times notes, but the company's headquarters moved on from its birthplace long before that milestone. Circle K relocated its corporate base to Phoenix in 1957, and its U.S. operations are now run out of Tempe, Arizona, according to FundingUniverse. The brand entered the international market in 1979 and, after Laval, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard acquired Circle K in 2003, expanded to more than 20 countries, per the El Paso Times.
Part Of A Bigger Corporate Push
The Montwood Drive project fits into a much larger expansion effort. Couche-Tard announced a strategy in February 2026 to add 750 company-operated stores over five years, with a target of 100 new builds during fiscal year 2026, according to CSP Daily News. The parent company now operates roughly 17,300 convenience stores across 29 countries and territories, with about 13,200 of those selling road transportation fuel, Alimentation Couche-Tard reported in its own corporate announcement.
Today, Circle K is one of the most recognized convenience store brands on the market, and the El Paso Times notes the new Montwood store is headed for a fast-growing pocket of the city sometimes described as northeast El Paso, sitting across the street from an Albertsons and a Goodwill thrift store.
Building In A Corridor Already Under Construction
The Montwood Drive corridor has seen major infrastructure work in recent years to keep pace with East El Paso's residential growth, including the Montwood Street extension and the John Hayes Extension Project, as covered in Hoodline's report on the John Hayes lockout. That construction has reflected surging traffic volumes on the area's main arterial streets as new subdivisions fill in around it.
The new store also arrives against a backdrop of operational hiccups at other East El Paso Circle K locations this year. In May, a nearby Circle K on North Zaragoza Road dealt with motorist complaints after a third-party supplier accidentally unloaded diesel fuel into a premium gasoline tank, forcing pump shutdowns and triggering vehicle repair claims. In August, arson investigators asked the public for help identifying two suspects who filled plastic water bottles with gasoline at that same Zaragoza Road Circle K before setting two pickup trucks on fire in a nearby neighborhood — a case that remained unsolved as of that report.
Not every recent Circle K story in East El Paso has involved trouble. In April, the chain struck a distribution deal with Phoenix-based AZ Lemonade Stand to stock mason-jar beverages in roughly 650 stores across the Southwest, including locations in El Paso. Whether the new Montwood Drive store will carry the same lineup once it opens has not been detailed in city filings.
