The Morden Community Thrift Store is set to grow with construction starting on a second building.
A sod-turning ceremony was held Aug. 5 to officially kick off work on the building which will be directly east of the existing building on North Railway Ave in downtown Morden.
“We’ll be able to sell a lot more stuff, and that was the whole idea behind this endeavour,” said board president Kent Noel.
“I’ve been with the thrift shop now for about eight years, and in that eight years I’ve seen the expansion of the merchandise that’s coming in, and we just couldn’t keep up with it all,” he said. “Eight years ago, I started thinking about this property already … when they were putting up the for sale sign … I was already making calls about purchasing the property.”
Noel reiterated that the thrift shop could not go any further with its existing space.
“Space-wise, the building we have right now, it can’t handle everything that we’re getting, and we’ve seen the need now for a few years,” he said.
“We actually purchased this property about two and a half years ago, and we’ve been working on figuring out a design capable of everything that we need to do,” he said, explaining that the new building will be for furniture, sporting goods and hardware while the existing building will offer things like housewares, clothing and toys
“The smaller items will be in the existing store, and the larger items will be in the new store.”
Noel noted they are working with contractor Scott Howard, who has been very helpful in moving the project forward.
“He is what has made this transition for us easier than what it could have been,” he said. “He has done a lot of groundwork, and we had some hurdles and hoops to go through, and he has that on himself. Without him, we wouldn’t be starting this now … he has done a lot of work for us.”
The new building will be about 10,400 square feet (compared to the 5,000 sq. ft. in the existing store) with floor sales space of about 8,000 square feet.
“It will look very similar to the existing building. We’ll have a bigger drop-off area, bigger donation area … parking will be better … it’s going to look like a mirror of the other one pretty much,” Noel said.
They are looking at a cost of at least $1.4 million, thought they expect it will get higher.
“We’ve got some money set aside, and we are going to have a mortgage on this property, but our plan is to have it paid off in about seven or eight years, and we will still be able to give back to the community,” said Noel.
“It’s been a long process to get here,” he said. “Right now, we probably average about $600,000 a year going back into the community … and once this is up and established with both operating to an efficiency I think it will be, I can see perhaps $800,000 or more going back into the community.”
