Clair’s C Market to have new life as Korner Mart

An Ash Grove gas station that was closed about two years ago will be reopening its doors in less than three weeks. The old Clair’s gas station—also temporarily called New Store No. 2—located at the intersection of Highway 160 and N. Calhoun, will reopen on Wed., March 16 as Korner Mart.
Karla Cox, owner of Handy Hut in Everton, is the new owner of the gas station. She said she is opening the gas station because she wanted “to give the people of Ash Grove a locally-owned (business).”
Cox said both the Handy Hut, which she has owned for 16 years, and the soon-to-be Korner Mart are named for convenience stores from when she was growing up in Kansas.
“Way back in my younger days, when I lived in Kansas, I worked as a convenience store in Johnson, Kan. that was named the Handy Hut,” she said. “So, (going) forward 20 years, I moved to Missouri, and I had the chance to buy what used to be called Clark’s Quick Stop, and I named it the Handy Hut because that's where I worked in Kansas. All of my other useful years of growing up was in a different town in Kansas, and our only convenience store there growing up was a little blocked building on a corner that was named the Korner Mart.”
When the Korner Mart opens, Cox said, there will be one key piece of merchandise for which customers will have to wait.
“There will be gas, but gas will be at least 60 days out after I open,” she said.
However, the Korner Mart will have several other offerings.
“There will be normal convenience stuff like ice, beer, soda, snack stuff, and then there will be a deli,” Cox said. “There will be burgers, there will be sandwiches there will be Hunt’s Brothers’ Pizza, the list is endless.”