Partners Shane Marshall (left), Myrna Stark and Colin Hyland stand in their new business at 232 Maple Ave., which they are converting to open an ACE Hardware location. The former liquor store and taxi dispatch will include a full variety of building supplies and an outdoor lumber yard and garden centre on several adjacent lots.--News photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
A group of commercial properties on Maple Avenue will be made into the most substantial new retail outlet to open in central Medicine Hat in more than a decade.
Maple Avenue ACE Hardware has a tentative opening date in late June as renovations at the former ALGC liquor store near Third Street continue and several adjacent properties to the rear are transformed to become a lumber yard and garden centre.
“We’re here for Hatters and to serve the people in the downtown, Flats and Crescent Heights,” said partner Myrna Stark. “It’s a high traffic road, and will keep people who need a bolt from having to drive all the way across town.”
The outlet, a franchise location of the ACE chain that is now under the Peavey Mart umbrella of companies, will be fully stocked and offer a wide array of hardware, finishes, paint, landscape and building material, says Stark.
Work has taken place over the winter to expose rafters and detail the store that will be completed and stocked in the coming month ahead of a grand opening date in late June.
It will be the most significant retail opening in the city’s central area since perhaps Parker’s Countrywide Furniture took over the Third Street location in 2001 as the Woolworth’s location was set to close.
That’s part of the appeal, said another partner, Colin Hyland, who says that with a grocery store across Second Street, the location becomes a “one stop shop for a lot of different things.”
Along with third partner Shane Marshall, the principals of Sandfly Signs originally purchased the building to locate an electronic billboard facing the high-volume Maple Avenue.
Stark owns the building to the rear and operates the separate company, Sandfly Marketing agency, out of the former construction company offices between Maple Avenue and N. Railway Street.
Stark says her research shows the central area of the city is under served, as well as the north side and areas furthest away from new big-box store construction mostly in the south end where building supply stores have migrated over the years.
The location has enough room to provide a fully stocked paint department, specialty pieces as well as the general assortment of nuts, bolts, tools and other sundries.
The building, at 232 Maple Ave., was one of the historic Alberta Government Liquor Stores in the city. More recently a private liquor store under the Ace Liquor (no connection to the hardware outlet) and Liquor Depot banners. A connected bay was the home of Care Cabs’ dispatch office until that entity move to a neighbourhood commercial space on the Southeast Hill.
The former taxi offices are set to become a barbecue showroom, and a lumber yard will comprise the former construction company’s yard next door.
The group has acquired an abutting residential property that was once the Damon Lanes Tea House. A demolition permit was issued last week and that should proceed soon.
