For more than a decade, Dawn Gregg and her husband Bruce have been asked by their Indian Trail neighborhood customers when they would open an Ace Hardware in that neck of the woods.

The Greggs own the 9,000-square-foot Ace at 1616 W. Rowan, on the North Side, as well as the 25,000-square-foot store at 808 W. Francis, a little more than a mile away. They bought the Rowan store in 2003 and the Francis location in 2007, she says.

“We looked at Indian Trail (before we bought the Rowan store); it was such a bedroom community,” Dawn Gregg says.

“But over time, we started watching the growth, watching traffic patterns and thought we should take another look at it,’’ she says.

Their studies led them to conclude it’s now worth opening another Ace; this one to be located in a nearly 5,000-square-foot retail space on a stand-alone pad in the Sundance Plaza shopping center, at 8917 N. Indian Trail Road.

“Every year we’ve heard, ‘When are you going to come to Indian Trail?’’’

The new store likely will open near the end of the first quarter of next year, she says.

The new store will have all the staples of the other stores, with emphasis on electrical, hardware, and plumbing supplies. However, the building’s smaller footprint means the store won’t have the same amount of space dedicated to lawn and gardening as the two other stores, Gregg says.

At the outset, Gregg says she anticipates the new store will employ six or seven people. That compares with nearly two dozen employees at the Francis store and a dozen at Rowan.

Gregg says it’s likely that there could be some shifting of employees to help the new store get up and running. She also predicts it’s going to be a challenge for her and her husband to relinquish some of their involvement on the sales floor.

“We work in our businesses. We don’t sit in our offices,” she says. “We love the interaction with our customers and love to help them. Now, we can’t be in three places at once, so this may be an adjustment for us.”