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Thursday, October 18, 2007

John Brooks Store Gets New Tenants

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
    What used to be the John Brooks Value-Way grocery store in Edgewood will likely be home to at least three new businesses soon.
    The future tenants of the vacant retail space, at the corner of N.M. 344 and Dinkle Road, held a news conference Monday at the nearby East Mountain Grill.
    A Sandia Laboratory Federal Credit Union branch, a Salvation Army thrift store and a Sears Dealer store for Sears Roebuck and Co. may soon fill the vacant spaces along the eastern side of the shopping center.
    The credit union will occupy the area to the north, which has previously been home to two banks. It is expected to open Nov. 1 and have a grand opening celebration sometime in the beginning of December.
    The Sears Dealer store is expected to take about one-third of the 25,000-square-foot space that was John Brooks. The store will sell lawn and garden equipment, tools, exercise equipment and appliances.
    "It will look, act and smell like a small version of Sears," said Eric Schoen of Eric Schoen & Associates Inc., the leasing agent for the property.
    Items Sears carries that are not on hand at the Sears Dealer store will be available for order as well.
    The remaining two-thirds of the 25,000 square-foot space will be taken over by the Salvation Army.
    The space has been vacant since March of this year, when the John Brooks store closed.
    The prospective owner of the Sears Dealer store had not signed a lease as of Monday, but work had already begun on the shop's interior.
    Schoen said he expected the owner to have the store up and running by Dec. 1.
    He said allowing work to go on without a lease was somewhat unusual.
    "We're going faster because of Christmas," Schoen said.
    The Salvation Army's lease agreement allows the organization to shrink its store by half if there aren't enough customers to sustain the shop.
    At its current size of about 16,000 square feet, Schoen said he believes it will be among the biggest Salvation Army stores in New Mexico.
    He said he feels the two stores will draw customers to the other restaurants and retail shops in the center.
    With the road-widening project on N.M. 344 almost completed and a big-box store under construction down the road, some of the shop owners are optimistic about future business.
    "With the Wal-Mart coming in and the traffic (it will bring), it's going to work out very well," said Jerry Gevedon, co-owner of DJ's Doghouse, a restaurant in the shopping center.