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Co-op store move creates 30 jobs, new opportunity

After a year and a half of planning, demolition, blasting and building, the new North of 53 Consumers Co-op store will open to the public on Friday morning, employing 30 new staff, who have been hired to run the new store along with workers from the
Coop move
Creighton Kodiaks football players Bailey Noonan, Evan Madarash and Corbin Collier push a shopping cart loaded with cheese into the back of a moving truck. The football team volunteered to move items from the now-closed Co-op store, while Hapnot Collegiate students helped stock shelves at the new store. - PHOTO BY ERIC WESTHAVER

After a year and a half of planning, demolition, blasting and building, the new North of 53 Consumers Co-op store will open to the public on Friday morning, employing 30 new staff, who have been hired to run the new store along with workers from the previous store.

“There’s certainly a lot of excitement around it. I hope people will be curious and I think they’ll really like what they see when they get there,” said Co-op general manager Tom Therien.

The previous store shut down for the last time on April 21, with volunteers from a number of community and student groups coming to help move food items and shelving to the new building.

When the new store opens, the current store site will be vacant. The current administrative office will be moved to a spot on the lower level of the current Co-op building, possibly moving to the new store at a later date.

There’s no need to worry about the building being left behind, however; Therien said there have been potential buyers interested in opening businesses on the old store floor. While discussions are still ongoing, Therien did say one potential buyer, a franchise business with a presence in Flin Flon, is interested in operating in a third of the building’s upper level.

“We have people kicking tires for the rest of it,” he said.

“One bid is actually fairly far along. We’ve been in discussions for quite some time. It’s a fairly major business.”

The new building, located on the former site of the Flin Flon armoury, is about 40,000 square feet in size, about 70 per cent larger than the previous Co-op site on Main Street.

“It’s just a totally better layout. There’s no wasted space in this at all, period. There’s no pillars or anything, it’s just a gorgeous concept,” said Therien.

A monument honouring Canadian Forces field engineers that was on the previous armoury site will be included with the new store. The monument will occupy two spaces in the store’s parking lot, along with a small rock garden.

Long-time school kid hangout Dead Man’s Rock, initially supposed to be destroyed during blasting at the site, will also be left intact. The rock will sit at the rear of the store property, away from the store’s parking lot.

Two roads – one for entering, one for exiting – have been built to the new building, stretching from Highway 10A. 

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