Behold! The Ingles Lifestyle Pavilion

For the better part of a year, the people of Morganton have been trying to get some simple info out of Ingles and Morganton City Hall about a new Ingles store. Is it opening? When is it opening? What is being built? Is it, in fact, even an Ingles?

And for the better part of a year, the answer has been the same: silence, fog, code sections, sealed plans, and the sort of tight-lipped bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo usually reserved for alien autopsies.

The plans, we are told, are “sealed.”

Sealed.

As if what is rising in Morganton is not a grocery store but a nuclear weapons facility.

But no more.

After months of patient reporting, public pestering, and what can only be described as elite journalistic investigation, The Paper has obtained the first totally exclusive look at the new Ingles.

Colored architectural elevations of the exterior, too.

And dear reader, this is not just a grocery store. Nooooooo.

Today, The Paper is publishing these renderings and reporting that behind the silence, the sealed plans, and the municipal cloak-and-dagger routine, lies not a modest grocery store but a 10-story, 750,000-square-foot, all-inclusive, bring-the-family, one-stop-for-anything entertainment pavilion extraordinaire.

A little neighborly competitive spirit got the project going.

“We sure as hell ain’t about to be outdone by some damn brand-new giant chicken plant ov’re aire ‘cross town,” Head Guy Mr. Ingles said off the record, once we tracked him down. “Damn chicken plant is all the rage just ‘cause it’s seven stories tall! My new store is gonna be 10, by god. Gonna call it the Ingles Lifestyle Pavilion. Tallest building in town.”

A touch of background: Ingles was a very popular grocery store in Morganton on Carbon City Road. Hurricane Helene closed it. Seeking the whys, whens, and wherefores about reopening is like searching for extraterrestrial life. Nothing but static and the occasional blip on the telescope.

Ingles Corporate won’t answer the phone, respond to mail, texts, emails, voice mail, FedEx packages, nothing. Not from The Paper anyway.

Mr. Ingles, making clear that he was speaking strictly on background, said his vision was inspired by “that wild top-of-the-building roller coaster skyscraper” in Las Vegas.

A leading member of the Morganton Planning, Review, and Rejection committee told The Paper that, “First off, if you print this you are Dead Meat. Because these plans are SEALED! CONFIDENTIAL! By state law One-Thirty-One-point-something.

“But the fact is, Ingles is doing what Ingles is doing and we are good with whatever they’re doing because we need The Ingles,” they said.

“They can process weapons-grade Uranium there and sell it to Iran, for all I care,” the Review & Reject committee member said. “We’ll give them every variance they need. In a heartbeat. Unanimously, too. But for damn sure don’t quote me on that, ‘cause we normally reject requests. Rejection’s good for business.”

The planned Ingles Lifestyle Pavilion complex features the following upgraded food selections, according to plans and designs obtained by The Paper:

A huge selection of family packs of fresh Case Farms Chicken breasts.

A 24-hour Hot Chicken Biscuits-To-Go drive-through.

Five selections of liquid chicken, including broth, dark broth, chunky broth, and noodle.

“I’ll tell you,” Mr. Ingles said. “And this also is highly confidential. But it’s no ‘ticular coincidence that we’ve expanded our chicken menu just as Case Farms has expanded its chicken plant just a mile down the road.”

“Our chicken parts will be the freshest chicken parts sold anywhere,” he said. “Except maybe Inner Mongolia China. Those guys eat chicken feet that are still twitching.”

While Mom and Dad shop for chicken and other groceries on the first floor of the Ingles Lifestyle Pavilion, you can take the indoor glass elevator to any of the top nine floors and attend movies, see a show, ice skate, go bowling, shoot skeet, pony up to bars, dance the night away, and ride a top-of-the-building roller coaster with killer views of the Blue Ridge and possibly Tennessee if you lean just right.

“Spend the day. Spend the weekend,” Mr. Ingles said. “Just spend some money.”

“We’re building it so we can add five MORE stories for condos later on,” he said. “Make it 15-stories tall. Make that Case Chicken plant look like an outhouse. Smell like one, too. … Oh, it already does. I forgot. HAA HA HA HA HA HAA.”

“We hear there’s a housing shortage in town, so why not build up?” Mr. Ingles said in confidence. “Besides, we’ve found Morganton to be VERY EASY to work with. They always say, ‘Whatever you want, you got.’”

“Hell fire, wun-a-dem Reviews and Rejects peoples just looked me in the face and said, ‘With us, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.’ But keep that to yourself.”

“And I have. Think I’d a-had that roller coaster up there on top if I asked? Hell no. That idea’d bypass Reviews altogether and head straight into Reject,” Mr. Ingles said, stressing that tidbit of info was especially not for publication.

“Same with the lights. You got your neon lights reaching up from 10 stories. Laser beams! You’ll see the Ingles Lifestyle Pavilion for MILES! From the Space Station! It will be BEAUTIFUL!”

When news of this exclusive investigative account reached the North Carolina Press Association executive committee, it immediately reached out.

“How’d you get the details,” the NCPA spokesman asked. “It’s a model for investigative responsible journalism, for sure.”

“Doggedness, pure and simple,” The Paper said. “And trust.”

“How’d you get them to talk to you,” the spokesman asked.

“Who said we talked to them,” The Paper said. “They never returned our calls. Officially.”