Pipers plans expansion as 2 St. John's area locations close
A well-known department store operating in the St. John's area for nearly 40 years is planning to shift and grow, starting by closing two stores, and opening one in a new location.
Pipers announced plans Monday to close stores on O'Leary Avenue in St. John's and Commonwealth Avenue in Mount Pearl at the end of March.
The company will open a new store in Bay Roberts.
General Manager Glen Skinner says the expansion to Conception Bay North was a long time coming.
"It's somewhere that we've been looking at for a number of years, and we thought that would be a nice place," he said. "We've got a lot of customers come from Bay Roberts and surrounding areas and they said they'd like to see a store out there, so we're going to give it a try."
He said the lease is signed on a building on the Conception Bay Highway in Bay Roberts, and the new store is scheduled to open in August.
Skinner said the building on O'Leary Avenue was sold to new owners with new plans for the space, and the company couldn't come to an agreement on a lease for the Commonwealth Avenue store, meaning it will essentially consolidate and move stores from one place to another.
The new location is expected to create 20 new jobs, Skinner said, but several current employees will move to the Bay Roberts store.
The other employees of the two stores set to close will be absorbed into other stores if they want to stay with the company, said Skinner.
But expanding to Bay Roberts is the first step in a larger, province-wide expansion.
"I've wanted to go to Bay Roberts for the past five years, so I guess after that we'll look at Carbonear or Clarenville, and then move on to Grand Falls and Corner Brook," Skinner said. "We think it's a good opportunity in going across the island because I think we're well known, we just need to put stores in the areas where the customer's to."
He said the next expansion will hopefully take place within the next year, and continue west after that.
It's a significant plan for growth for the company which currently operates six stores — all in the metro St. John's area — and employs about 180 people.
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