Community Corner

Chews Landing Road Ace to Close

The hardware store has an Oct. 1 target date for its shutdown.

The Chews Landing Road Ace hardware store will close its doors for good sometime over the next few weeks.

The store is targeting an Oct. 1 shutdown, manager Jeff Capps confirmed.

Ace has had a store in the Market Place shopping center for about five years now.

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The store's final day of business could come a little before or a little after Oct. 1.

"It just depends how quickly we can get stuff out of here and get everything else packed up," the store manager said.

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Ace is running an inventory liquidation sale, with regular prices cut by as much as 80 percent, to expedite the shutdown process, which must be completed by Nov. 1 at the latest.

The area franchise also includes locations in Hammonton and Tuckerton.

Inventory that is not sold by the Chews Landing Road store's final day of business and other equipment in the store here will be moved to the two other locations, as will some, but not all, employees at the local store.

"A lot of good people are going to be losing jobs," Capps said. "Some will be moving to the Hammonton store, but others will be out of jobs. There's already enough people unemployed. We don't need any more."

Ace began as a small chain of Chicago-area hardware stores in 1924. The company became a "retailer-owned cooperative," with franchisees, in 1976.

Ace currently has more than 4,600 stores open in 50 states and 60-plus countries.

Despite a struggling economy and the imminent closing of the local store, Ace Hardware Corporation as a whole has had a good 2011.

It has already opened 87 new franchises in 2011 and plans to have opened a total of approximately 110 stores by year's end, according to Kate Kirkpatrick, Ace public relations manager.


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