Spokane-based Rosauers Supermarkets Inc. has started construction of a project that will add an Ace Hardware store to its Nine Mile Falls supermarket, at 5912 state Route 291.

Rosauers President and CEO Jeff Philipps says, “We’d been talking with Ace for quite some time about the possibility of adding a hardware store at this location. This approach has worked well for other stores in the URM family, especially in more rural areas.”

URM Stores Inc., formerly United Retail Merchants, is the Spokane-based wholesale food distribution cooperative that owns Rosauers.

Philipps says there was a hardware store in the Nine Mile Falls area at one time, but the store closed several years ago.

“This store is a ways outside of the Spokane metro area, and there was a need for a hardware store,” he says. “So we felt this was a good opportunity to better serve our customers in that area.”

Philipps says the project involves constructing an 8,000-square-foot building that will attach to the west side of the existing 32,000-square-foot store. The hardware and grocery stores will have separate exterior entrances but will have an interior pass-through access between the two.

He says Spokane-based Mercier Architecture & Planning designed the expansion, of Spokane, and Yost Gallagher Construction LLC, also of Spokane, is the contractor.

“Construction on the project began at the end of last month,” says Philipps. “We’re just starting to put up the outside walls now, and hope to have the hardware store portion open for business by mid-August.”

Philipps says the Nine Mile Falls Rosauers currently has 51 employees, and he expects the new Ace Hardware portion of the store will need between 12 and 15 new employees for operations.

Mike Shirts, chief operating officer for Rosauers, says new staff working in the Ace Hardware space will be hired by Rosauers.

“They’ll technically be Rosauers employees, but assigned specifically to Ace Hardware,” he says.

When asked if Rosauers might consider adding more Ace Hardware outlets to its other supermarkets in the future, Shirts says it would depend on the circumstance.

“This is a new concept for us, but it made a lot of sense for this location,” he says. “Each area is different, so I think we’d continue to consider things on a case-by-case basis.”

Rosauers Supermarkets was founded in 1934 by J. Merton Rosauer. The company was sold in 1984 to Spokane-based URM Stores, and now includes 21 stores under the Rosauers and Huckleberry’s Natural Market brands.