Modeling an Agway?

There is an Agway facility in western New York that my wife passes by when going to visit her family. When she found out that I was modeling a rural New England layout she asked if I could build a model of it. It seemed like a good idea (it's a good industry, and it makes my wife happy... both equally important considerations) so I looked at online images and talked to the owners. Since it is 5 hours from my house, doing my own research in the winter wasn't convenient.

Even though it isn't currently rail served, it probably once was and it would be simple to run my last spur track to the rear of it. The front is an overflowing agriculture and feed store which serves local farmers. The facilities is sprawling with lots of ancillary buildings and outdoor material storage areas, and before I even started drawing plans for it I realized I would need to exclude a lot of stuff...

Then, I made a scale drawing on large pieces of oversize graph paper of just the footprint of the structure. It is a melange of various overhangs, porches, roof dormers and peaks... all of which I had to interpret and dimension based on overhead images.

Then, I took it over to the layout to see how it fit. And just as I feared, it didn't. It was huge and dominated the scene. So much so that even an access road in the front, or the rail siding in the back, wouldn't fit. I could have compressed it down even more, but then it would have looked more like one of the toyish Lionel 0-27 grain elevators and not like a real scale industry.

It only took about 2 hours to draw so it wasn't a wasted effort, but now I know I need a smaller industry for this track.

Perhaps I will be able to build the Agway on the other side of my layout though.