Lewis Country Store, a Davidson County gas station and convenience store with connections to far-right extremist groups, has been sold to Nashville-based Tri Star Energy, the parent company of Twice Daily stores.
The company confirmed the close of the sale Tuesday. The store has long displayed far-right and offensive political material and hate speech on its digital marquee, and lost its Shell branding in 2016. The Scene has not confirmed what brand of gas the store has been using since, and a Tri Star representative was unaware if the company had any prior business relationship with the store.
Tri Star Energy vice president of marketing Dawn Boulanger says the location would be operated like the company's other stores.
“When we acquire stores we run them the same way we run all of our other stores in our company,” says Boulanger. “We’ll run them with the same integrity that we run all of our stores with.”
Tri Star owns roughly 200 convenience stores across the South. Boulanger says they will make changes to the property but that it may not necessarily have a Twice Daily sign put up in the near future. She says the store is already under Tri Star’s operations and the previous owner is no longer involved.
“If you went in the store today, it looks very different today than it did three days ago,” Boulanger says.
Tri Star did not disclose how much it paid for the more than 5.5-acre property on Tuesday. According to documents from the Davidson County Register of Deeds, the property sold for $4.5 million. It was originally listed for $5 million by Gary Ashton’s Williamson County office. The property was previously represented by failed Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson, as reported by Scene sister publication The News.
The store, located on Old Hickory Boulevard in Bells Bend, was previously owned by Brad Lewis. Lewis, a self-described “actual, literal Nazi,” accompanied Hanson during a Franklin mayoral forum in October, where he and his associate Sean Kauffmann provided “protection.” Kauffmann is the leader of white supremacist group the Tennessee Active Club, which has been known to operate out of the Lewis Country Store. A Franklin resident was the target of threats in a now-deleted Telegram channel for the Lewis Country Store. Members have been known to use the messaging platform to threaten and post slurs in regard to local journalists and publications, including the Scene.
Brad Lewis opened the store in 2004 with his father, the late Jimmy Lewis, who was an active Nashville real estate investor in the 1970s and ’80s, and a convicted gambler.
