BILL GAITHER/The Register-MailThe Menards store front is awaiting signage above the front entrance. The 240,000-square foot home improvement store is located in Seminary Square Shopping Center next to the new Wal-Mart Supercenter. Menard is believed to be the thrid-largest home improvement chain in the country behind The Home Depot and Lowe's.
Menards moves up opening
Home improvement giant targets early '08
Monday, November 12, 2007
GALESBURG - The Menards in Seminary Square will open "early in '08" a company spokesman said this morning. When construction began on the 240,000-square-foot home improvement giant this past summer, a spring 2008 opening was anticipated.Company spokesman Jeff Abbott said, "I don't have the exact opening date." He said a target date has been set, but is not being released. One media outlet is reporting the store will open Jan. 7.
Abbott said there will be hundreds of new jobs at the store.
"Typically, what we tell people, at full strength we hope to employ 200 people," Abbott said, adding that "full strength" will not happen immediately.
Reports have put the size of the store at between 220,000 and 240,000 square feet. Abbott said that depends on whether the inside "yard" is included or not.
"All of our new stores are called the new Menards megastores," Abbott said; the official size of the megastores is 240,000 square feet.
A grand opening event will be held, but Abbot said it is not yet known whether that will take place the day the store opens or at a later date. He said Menards typically brings in former members of professional sports teams popular in the area to add excitement to the grand opening festivities.
"We're opening a store in Muscatine (Iowa) today," Abbott said. "Grand opening is coming up Dec. 1. They're going to have Kevin Butler from the Bears and they're going to be having Fergie Jenkins," a former Cubs pitcher, who is a member of the baseball Hall of Fame.
Abbott asked whether the Galesburg area is still Bears' country, and if it is Cubs/White Sox territory. Told the Bears are the most popular NFL team in the area, but the Cubs and Cardinals are the favorite baseball teams, he said Menards likely will bring in a former Bears player, as well as someone with ties to both the Cubs and Cards. One example he gave, although he did not say the former relief pitcher will be at the grand opening, was Lee Smith.
Menards will join the Wal-Mart Supercenter as the two anchors of Seminary Square. Six smaller stores have announced plans to open there as well. GameStop and The Shoe Dept. have put up their signs. GameStop officials said people interested in applying for a job can do so at the store in Kewanee, and the two locations in Peoria, one near The Shoppes at Grand Prairie and the other an EB Games store in Northwoods Mall.
Shoe Dept. is a division of the company that operates Shoe Show, which was originally named by the developer, Horne Properties of Knoxville, Tenn., as one of the stores that have signed leases for spaces in the buildings on the west side of the center. The Shoe Dept.'s nearest locations are in Southpark Mall, Moline; 389 W. Stevenson, Ottawa; and Oak Street Plaza, Quincy.
Buffalo Wild Wings also is set to open in one of the outlots of Seminary Square, near Seminary Street and Knox Square Drive. Russell Ivie of Morton, owner of the BWW franchise there, said earlier the restaurant will open in the spring of 2008.
Matt Sepaniak, leasing agent for Seminary Square, was in a staff meeting until deadline today, but he did take time to say there is no new news on two other restaurants that apparently will locate in the center. The names of those restaurants have yet to be released, because all necessary agreements have not yet been signed.
