Ground breaks on Lowe's

MOSES LAKE - Pamp Maiers was trying to develop the land, which is now the future site of Lowe's, for more than 20 years.

"Me and my partners have been involved for about 29 years in getting her done," he said last week as he watched machinery scrape ground off the surface of the land. "I guess I'm kind of glad to get it done without running out of time."

Maiers Development Corporation General Manager and Vice President Bob Fancher said ground broke Friday for the site work.

The corporation is selling the land and North Central Construction, also owned by Maiers, is doing the site work. Central Washington Asphalt is doing the paving and Masco Construction is doing all underground work.

Maureen Rich, spokesperson for Lowe's, said the store is prototype size, at 117,000 square feet of retail space and an additional garden center of approximately 31,000 square feet.

The store is expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Now that Lowe's is coming in, Fancher noted, there's a lot more activity on the property surrounding the future site of the store.

Another pad was sold and will be a strip center.

Across Yonezawa Boulevard from the Lowe's site, property was sold to a bank, Fancher said.

"We can't announce who it is yet," he said, before pointing to another piece of the property. "We're dealing with another bank over here."

Fancher said Lowe's was looking at Moses Lake for about two years.

"We actually started working with them about a year ago," he said. "We were aware they were looking around Moses Lake before that and we have a tenant representative in Seattle that deals with all these big boxes, and be brought them to us. He's a commercial real estate man (and) all he does is handle large tenants for development all over."

"Lowe's is always evaluating sites and we consider literally hundreds of factors when we evaluate those sites," Rich said. "Some of those factors are in areas of population, potential for growth, home ownership, things like that. So certainly, when we evaluated all those factors in Moses Lake, we determined that this was a great place for Lowe's. Our goal is always to build the best store on the best site for our customers."

"We feel it's a critical location because it has better access than most locations in town," Fancher said. "From entrance to the property and also Interstate 90, Highway 17, the Warden area. We have caught a few opportunities to develop it into something besides retail, but we've held this piece of ground for a box store to get started."

Fancher believes Moses Lake is now at the point where it is ready for additional retail.

"We want to make it a retail business center, which the bank's interest out here is very key," he said. "Once they see this going up, and once people know what's happening, we're getting a lot of interest."

Fancher believes the development will help Moses Lake's downtown area.

"It will keep more people in town and bring people from out of town here, these type of national tenants," he explained. "Hopefully they'll be gung-ho on downtown too."

Rich said a store of the planned size creates up to 175 new jobs, most of which would be local and full-time. The store also offers benefits to regular part-time employees, she added.

People interested in applying for a position may visit www.lowes.com/careers. Available positions will be posted online. The store typically begins posting positions when a store is under construction, Rich added.