JOHNSTOWN • Eight months on from the opening of Buc-ee’s first Colorado location in the small town north of Denver, locals are still adjusting to the presence of the Texas chain of super travel centers.

“It’s still crazy busy,” said nearby Milliken resident Carol Carlton as she got her nails done in downtown Johnstown. She brought her sons in the travel center soon after it opened in March and loved it.

“Everyone I’ve talked to says they can’t wait to go,” she said. Carlton’s 8-year-old son Greyson, sitting in a swivel chair beside her, said he was a fan of the chicken strips.

Buc-ee’s is eyeing a second location on Monument Hill that would involve a potential negotiation with the small town of Palmer Lake, which would need to annex the land.

Nearly a year in, Johnstown residents have mixed feelings about the big beaver sign on the hill.

Tyson Hull, who owns Red Barn Liquors just across the street, said that the Buc-ee’s construction closures initially hurt his business. Since the opening, he said that traffic in his store has increased by about 20% to 25%.

“We were fine,” he said. “It was just a matter of working our way through the closure.”

Some of the staunchest detractors of the Buc-ee’s are a handful of farmers living west of Interstate 25 toward Berthoud.

Darin Rome, a farmer and mechanic who works out of his residence on Weld County Road 7, said that the glow of Buc-ee’s on the horizon about a mile away was an unwelcome sign of things to come as the interstate corridor pushes out farms in favor of large-scale developments.

“They don’t want farmers anymore,” he said. “They’d rather have Buc-ee’s, I guess.”

Rome said the traffic from the travel center’s construction and subsequent opening had him and other neighbors taking different roads to avoid the commotion. He said car and motorcycle racers often stop at the Buc-ee’s before roaring past his house on the way to Colorado 56.

He and his son went in one time, but he doesn’t think he will visit again.

“When that place first opened, you didn’t want to be anywhere near it,” he said.

Neighbor Steve Olander said he used to farm the land where Buc-ee’s now sits. Leasing thousands of acres around the area, the farmer in his 70s said that pressure to sell and develop farmland was strong.

“The only thing Buc-ee’s has done is drop the price of gas,” he said. “Everything else has been detrimental.”

Some residents on the other side of the highway in Johnstown took a more positive outlook on the impact of the travel center. Robyn Neven, who lives in the nearby Rocksbury Ridge subdivision, said she was skeptical at first.

“I was a little turned off by it, and now it just doesn’t bother me,” she said.

Since the opening, Neven said she had been “pleasantly surprised” by the traffic mitigation of a roundabout at the exit. She said light pollution was also lower than she expected for such a large development.

Best of all, she said, was the tax revenue for Johnstown, which she hoped would go to public amenities.

Nearby in the same subdivision, Renee and Rusty D’Amico said they found the Buc-ee’s “gimmicky” and tended to avoid it when possible.

“If you ask me, I’m pretty negative about it,” said Rusty. Not everyone in the family is in agreement though; he said his daughter who lives nearby was a fan of the beaver nuggets.

Palmer Lake will have its first meeting to determine the eligibility of Buc-ee’s annexation request on Thursday evening. Johnstown residents have mixed advice on what their counterparts to the south should do.

Hull said now was a good time to develop.

“They’ll love the revenue,” he said.

Rome and Olander said Palmer Lake should say “no” while they can.

“If you can do it, I’d fight it,” said Rome.

Neven said she was unsure about the second location but that Palmer Lake residents should visit the Johnstown location to make up their minds.

“Change is difficult,” she said.