By ZACH WOYAK

The Mirror reporter

Halloween, a day full of scares, spooks and screams, gave people a different reason to scream, but this time it was out of excitement and not fear.  At 5:05 p.m. on Halloween, a meeting occurred in the board room of the Plover Municipal Center to discuss location site plans for two new businesses heading to the expanding Crossroads Commons: Pizza Ranch and Ulta Beauty.

Crossroads Commons was developed in 2004 and has been a flourishing place for businesses ever since. It started off having 13 businesses and has flourished into a community of more than 30 businesses over the past 12 years gaining at least one new business each year.

Pizza Ranch is a western themed restaurant founded in 1981 in Iowa. The restaurant offers pizza, chicken and salad all in the buffet fashion. It will not take the place of an old Crossroads business like Panera Bread did at Denny’s, instead it will be built between Aspen Dental and Golden Corral, placing the two buffets right next to each other.

Ulta Beauty is a beauty store with cosmetics, skin cares, hair cares and fragrances for men and women. Ulta Beauty will also come with an in-store salon. This beauty chain will be located in front of Lowe’s and just south of Charcoal Grill. Like Pizza Ranch, Ulta Beauty will be getting its own new building.

Both newcomers to Crossroads plan to open in 2017. Pizza Ranch is planning an opening for the spring after a signing for the property is completed in December or January. Ulta Beauty is planning to open in the fall of 2017 with construction possibly beginning as early as this year.

Two businesses being added this year to Crossroads along with Panera, may make many wonder what Crossroads has to offer next year and for years to come and how much room they have left to expand.

“I think expanding Crossroads Commons would be good for the economy of Plover. Bringing in new stores and services would also bring in more people. I feel like despite all the department stores there already that they should build a mall after they replaced the old one downtown with Midstate, which would ultimately increase the income of this town and the number of jobs,” Emily Feltz, a SPASH graduate said.

Junior Tristian Ysquierdo disagreed with Feltz saying, “I personally don’t think they should expand because it’s just going to get cluttered by a ton of different stores or restaurants that will eventually put others out of business. It will make good revenue for one specific company, but shut down others in the process. It’s all just one big push to see who can out do who really.”