An old Raleigh neighborhood is getting a new Ace Hardware. It’ll be different, owners say

A new hardware store will open this summer in the space formerly occupied by Walgreen’s in Raleigh’s Lake Boone Trail Shopping Center.

“It was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up,” said Paul Owens, who is opening the store with wife and business partner, Brooke Owens. “It’s a great location and York [Properties] is a great landlord. We just couldn’t pass it up.”

Owens said the store might be ready for customers in late July, but he said a soft opening in August is more likely. That would be followed by a big grand opening event in September, he said, with product giveaways and reps from one or two grill manufacturers cooking on their favorite models on the sidewalk.

Are all hardware stores the same?

This will be the Owenses’ sixth Ace store in North Carolina. The others are in Lake Gaston, Rolesville, Holly Springs, Angier and Garner.

Owens said each store is a little different, catering to local clientele. The Lake Gaston store has a marine goods and fishing gear department, for example, and some stores offer a wide selection of live plants.

The Lake Boone Trail store, just down the street from UNC Rex Hospital, doesn’t have much room for live plants, but Owens said it will likely have a larger offering of North Carolina-centric gifts and home decor items than some of the couple’s other stores.

Owens said he expects the store will get a lot of traffic from people who are going to or from Rex Hospital, stop in the center to get something to eat from one of its restaurants and run into the hardware store to pick up a few things.

Owens said his wife’s design for the store will make sure “this is not your grandfather’s old hardware store,” especially because of the increasing number of women now involved in do-it-yourself projects around their homes. Customers don’t want to shop in a store that’s dark, dirty and smells like spilled solvent and spent grease, he said.

“They want clean and bright,” Owens said.

What else is going on at Lake Boone Trail Shopping Center?

George York, president and CEO of York Properties, which owns the center, said Monday that renovations have been completed or are coming along on several spaces within the center.

The shopping center dates to the 1970s, when its grocery store anchor was an A&P, and has undergone an overhaul in recent years.

Architecture firm New City Design Group revamped the storefronts in 2021, and project leader Peter Wentz said the goal was to give each space a different look.

“We tried to give it a bit more of a neighborhood feel, with more distinct shops,” Wentz said. “We tried to distinguish each one of the tenants with its own structure rather than having one unbroken string. We added a little variety.”

▪ The Chick-fil-A in the shopping center reconfigured its drive-through to faster handle its high volume of traffic.

▪ Mcdonald’s demolished its old building and is nearing completion on a replacement with an improved drive-through set up.

▪ And the freestanding office and bank building on the property has been revamped to include three new eateries, two of which are open: Chicken Salad Chick and The Butcher’s Market at Lake Boone. Duck Donuts also is coming to that building but isn’t quite finished, York said.