SCRANTON — A project to build a Wawa in Scranton advanced with the start of excavation for installation of underground gasoline tanks, a city official said.

The developer contacted the city last month about starting construction at the site by the end of May, and the excavation taking place along Moosic Street in South Side began May 26 for installation of gasoline tanks, city Planner Don King said.

The proposal for a Wawa in South Scranton by NDA Moosic LLC of Vestal, New York, was the first of the five potential Wawa locations in Lackawanna County to arise in recent years.

In 2022, NDA Moosic LLC received Scranton zoning approval for a Wawa on the 5-acre site at 1130-36 Moosic St. and 117 Meadow Ave., as well as an Aldi grocery store on a rear portion of that property.

Before the excavation that started last week, work done previously at the Wawa site in Scranton involved demolition of a vacant building at 1130 Moosic St. that years ago was a Profera’s Pizza and later Electric City Hot Yoga; and environmental cleanup of contaminated soil at the former industrial tract in South Side.

Efforts to reach this developer of the Wawa in Scranton were unsuccessful.

Four other, separate proposals for Wawas elsewhere in Lackawanna County involve other developers and those projects have been in various stages of planning. They include:

• Two in Dickson City: one at the former Lackawanna Executive Park, a small strip mall at the corner of Main Street and Viewmont Drive; and the other along Cold Spring Road on Bell Mountain just above Business Route 6; and one in Dickson City

• One in Carbondale Twp. along Meredith and Main streets across from an existing Sheetz.

• One in Covington Twp., near Drinker Turnpike and Bochicchio Boulevard near North Pocono High School.

Efforts also were unsuccessful to reach a Wawa spokesperson for information on the statuses of all of that Wawas proposed in Lackawanna County.

The five Wawa proposals arising in Lackawanna County come as the Southern Pennsylvania-based gas station and convenience store chain has been expanding north in the Keystone State to compete against rival Sheetz, which already has six stores in the Lackawanna County.

Wawa’s current northernmost locations are in Wilkes-Barre Twp. in Luzerne County and several in Monroe County.

A chain of over 1,110 convenience stores, of which over 900 offer gasoline, Wawa has stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and Washington, D.C., according to a company fact sheet.