Osoyoos Home Building Centre’s new location off Highway 3 is officially opening on Dec. 6. (Vanessa Broadbent / Osoyoos Times)
By Vanessa Broadbent
Osoyoos Times
A month earlier than originally planned, Osoyoos Home Building Centre has set an official opening date of Dec. 6 for its new location off Highway 3 near the Osoyoos Airport.
The project broke ground in February, with a then-projected opening date of January 2020, but with a few technical installations left to complete, the store is just about ready to open, general manager Cory Hilditch said.
Compared to the store’s current location on Main Street and 87th Street, the new centre has about 6,000 more square feet of retail space. There’s also a 7,000 square foot warehouse and a Quonset hut the same size.
There will also be about 2,400 additional items for sale in the new store.
“There’s not a department that we didn’t have before, but each department is now larger,” Hilditch said. “If we don’t have something sometimes it take us two or three days to transfer a product from Penticton to here. We’ll have a larger selection so they don’t have to do that as much.”
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In the next few weeks, staff will start moving products from the old store to the new location. A sales associate will be onsite by the middle of November, Hilditch said.
“We’re going to do it to try and not disrupt customers as much as possible, but at some point there will be more product up here than there.”
Hilditch also plans to add another three employees to the store’s current staff of 21.
“It’ll definitely be good for Osoyoos,” he said. “It’s the only store of its kind, new building and a big facility like this so we’re looking to offer definitely stuff to Osoyoos but the surrounding area as well.”
The store opens on Dec. 6, but a grand opening event will take place in March next year.
