LINCOLN, Maine — Its owners had hoped to open it this month, but the SW Collins Co. hardware store on West Broadway will start serving customers with a mid-February soft opening, a store co-owner said this week.
“We were probably overly optimistic to want to open at very end of January. It has taken a little bit longer than we anticipated,” co-owner Gregg Collins said Monday. “Everything is progressing. We probably missed a little bit on the opening date, which is OK.”
The largest single development on West Broadway in the last 10 years, town officials have said that the SW Collins store is one of the cornerstones of Lincoln’s development, along with the $1.8 million widening of the road and the attraction of new retail and industrial business to West Broadway and the River Road corridor to Interstate 95.
The Collins Co., which is run by the brothers of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, bought the land at 302 West Broadway for $40,000 from Thomas and Scott Gardner of Lincoln in November 2012. The company also bought out the retail arm of Haskell Lumber Inc. of 431 Main St. in Lincoln for an undisclosed price in April 2013.
The Lincoln facility will have a grand opening sometime in March. It has an 18,000-square-foot retail facility and an enclosed drive-through lumberyard that is about 30,000 square feet. Fourteen full- and part-time workers will staff the store initially. The start-up dates are uncertain because the owners “want to be completely ready and the first impression [customers get] is important,” Collins said.
With the store opening on West Broadway, the property they were leasing at Haskell will revert to owner Mike McFalls, Collins said. McFalls did not return a telephone call on Tuesday.
SW Collins also has stores in Caribou, Houlton and Presque Isle.
Voters approved the road-widening in November. Engineers are due to finish designing the addition of a center lane to West Broadway from Hannaford to River Road this spring, with construction beginning by the summer.