WILLMAR -- Dennis and Adele Reed of Marshall have announced they plan to move their Runnings Farm and Fleet store in Willmar to the building previously occupied by Wal-Mart on South First Street.
The Reeds said Friday they are pleased with the performance of their Willmar store and are excited about the opportunity to move to a larger building. The move to the new site is planned to begin in February and be completed by early spring.
"The additional space will allow us to do things the way we have always wanted to do,'' the Reeds said in a news release. "The larger building better suits the needs of our customers and allows us to add thousands of new items. It's always been our position to carry a wide variety of products ... ''
The Reeds said the larger store will help the company meet the goal of having merchandise in stock when customers need it.
"We couldn't be more pleased than to be able to provide even better service in Willmar and the surrounding area,'' the Reeds said.
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The Reeds operate 29 Runnings store in Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. The company has headquarters in Marshall.
The fate of the former Wal-Mart building had been the subject of speculation for some time. A Wal-Mart spokesman had stated in mid-October that an unnamed retail business was being considered as a potential buyer.
The former 91,500-square-foot Wal-Mart store opened on June 27, 1990. It closed and Wal-Mart opened a 207,000-square-foot Supercenter on Oct. 10 on 19th Avenue Southeast.
Moving its business to former Wal-Mart buildings is nothing new for Runnings, according to Wayne Mack, Runnings operations supervisor.
"We've been considering the move since they announced they were putting up a Supercenter,'' Mack told the Tribune. "We have moved six Runnings stores into vacated Wal-Marts when they built Supercenters. Anytime that one came up in our market area, we certainly were interested.''
Mack said Runnings will buy the former Wal-Mart building. He said Runnings will have access the first of February, and the move will take from four to six weeks, depending on when Runnings takes possession.
Mack said the Willmar Runnings store at 15,000 square feet does not have enough space. He said parking is insufficient and access is a problem.
"We've pretty much maxed out what we can do for business out of that building,'' he said.
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Runnings still has a number of years remaining on the lease of the present building.
"We'll have things there for some time, and once we're out of there and everything is settled at the new store, we would probably try to sublease it through the extent of the lease,'' he said.
