Strip mall to get Goodwill store; other mall"s anchor still uncertain
By Nick Claussen
Athens NEWS Associate Editor
March 24, 2008
While rumors persist about new tenants for the University Mall, one new tenant for the Athens Mall will open its doors in April.
In the strip shopping center known as the Athens Mall, a new Goodwill Industries store will be part of a national organization of thrift stores also involved in community service projects.
Meanwhile, down the street at the University Mall, owners Tom Parfitt and Brent Hayes have been trying to fill the former Kmart anchor space in their mall, and rumors have been rampant about how a business has already agreed to locate there. Hayes and Parfitt have said previously that they have been talking to businesses interested in locating in the mall and hoped to have an agreement soon.
On Friday, Hayes would only say that no lease has been signed yet, and that he and Parfitt are working hard to fill the space. This is more or less what he and Parfitt have been saying for months.
The Goodwill Industries store will be located next to the Social Security office in the Athens Mall strip shopping center on East State Street, according to Keith Alcorn, chief executive officer of Goodwill Industries of South Central Ohio, Inc.
“We’re real excited about getting started in Athens,” Alcorn said Friday. The store is expected to be open by mid to late April, he said.
Goodwill Industries is a national non-profit organization that has more than 100 stores in Ohio, Alcorn said. The organization accepts donations of clothing, toys, housewares, books, furniture and a wide range of other items, and then sells them at very low prices.
Local organizations such as New-To-You and Re-Use Industries, Inc., operate with a similar business/service model.
The Athens Goodwill store will be part of an eight-county district that already has stores in Jackson, McArthur, Circleville, Waverly, Washington Court House and Chillicothe. In the past, all donations in the district went to a centralized processing center, but now all donations stay at the stores, Alcorn said.
“Anything that someone would like to get, we would be glad to take,” he said about donations. The organization discourages people bringing in items that are “too far gone,” as dealing with trash is a big expense, he said.
“Our inventory is constantly changing,” he added. The stores have rotation schedules for the products so they do not sit out on the shelves for too long, he said.
For the clothing items that do not sell over a long period of time, Goodwill Industries will turn some of the cotton clothing items into rags, and send many of the other clothing items to international relief agencies, he said.
“Even if they don’t sell, the clothes don’t get wasted,” Alcorn said. “We really do a lot to keep things out of the waste stream.” The national organization also has an online auction site that allows the local stores to place some items for sale on the Internet, Alcorn said.
For the Athens store, Goodwill Industries hopes to hire a manager soon, and will hire a total of six employees to start, he said.
“The retail side is really just the funding mechanism for our mission side,” Alcorn added.
The mission side of the organization includes a workforce development project that in most counties works with agencies such as the Ohio Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation and county departments of Job and Family Services, he said.
“We help folks overcome barriers to employment in the community,” Alcorn said. The organization helps people find jobs and helps them receive job training, he added.
“That’s one of our very strong mission programs,” Alcorn said.
In some counties, Goodwill Industries works with the local mental retardation/developmental disabilities agencies on workshop activities and other work experiences, Alcorn said.
“We have been talking with several different organizations around the community,” he said. Goodwill Industries hopes to help local residents by providing retail items sold at low prices and through its many community-service projects, he said,
“We think it’s a wonderful community for us to be in,” Alcorn said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to serve a lot of folks there. We’re looking forward to a good, long relationship with the folks in Athens.”
Comments
Please log in to post a comment.
