A hardware retailer here that opened an Ace Hardware store on the South Hill in 2002 plans to open its second Spokane-area store.


The company, Jant Group II Inc., has leased a 17,500-square-foot former Rite Aid Corp. store building at the northwest corner of Sprague Avenue and Sullivan Road, says Martin Ruggiero, a Phoenix-based businessman who owns Jant Group with his brother, Art. The store is to be called Spokane Valley Ace Hardware.


We like the location, he says. We figure Spokane Valley is a good area to get into.


Ruggiero says minor tenant improvements are under way at the building and should be completed later this month. The store is expected to open in early March and will employ about 25 people, he says.


The building is five years old and was built for Rite Aid, but the Harrisburg, Pa.-based drug-store chain closed its outlet there in late 2002, after determining the store was an underperformer, a Rite Aid spokeswoman said at the time.


Ruggiero says Jant Group is subleasing that space from Rite Aid.


The Valley store space is about half the size of the first outlet that Jant Group opened here in late 2002. That first store, called South Hill Ace, includes about 35,000 square feet of floor space and is located in a former Albertsons Inc. supermarket, at 4416 S. Regal.


Jant Group subleases the South Hill space from a former tenantAlbertsons moved a supermarket from there in 2000 about a mile south to larger quarters in the Cedar Canyon Shopping Center.


Ruggiero says Jant Group doesnt have any immediate plans for more locations here, but eventually would like to operate five stores in the Spokane area.


Other retailers operate another four independently-owned Ace Hardware stores in the Spokane area.


Carl Guenzel, of Kiemle & Hagood Co., handled the lease of the former Rite Aid building.