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$2.6 million remodel to make way for a new home décor store is underway inside

the vacant Shopko store in Kennewick.

The Texas-based retailer At Home is poised to open its third Washington store in late fall, after recently opening stores in Spokane and Puyallup. The At Home store in Puyallup opened in January and was the first West Coast location for the company.

The

former Shopko store at 867 N. Columbia Center Blvd. next door to Ranch &

Home closed in early May after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

protection at the start of the year. There had been hope the store would remain

open as the company tried to reorganize, but all Shopko locations nationwide

closed by the end of June.

Having

another retailer move in so quickly while there are other empty storefronts

around town was a win for Mark Maldonado, who owns the building through his

company Corvalis WA LLC.

“I didn’t [originally] work with a broker and I didn’t put it on the market,” Maldonado said. “It just kind of worked out because they were looking for a building that size to take over the whole building so it worked out really well for us.”

Maldonado was contacted by Andrew Lybbert with Lybbert Fielding Real Estate in Pasco, who said he had been working to find a suitable Tri-City location for At Home for the past two years. Maldonado then enlisted Lybbert as his broker, noting “the complexities of negotiating commercial leases.”

The

building’s original owner in the mid-1980s was Costco before it moved to its

current location on West Gage Boulevard in Kennewick. It was bought by Shopko

and then sold to Maldonado’s company for $9.2 million in 2017.

At Home describes itself as a “value-oriented fashion retailer,” and sells furniture, lamps, rugs, wall décor, pillows and throws, as well as kitchen, bath and bedding items.

It

boasts 50,000 products available in its superstores, which are found across 38

states, totaling just under 200 stores.

The

company profile targets a building size around 110,000 square feet and the

Kennewick building is 106,000 square feet.

Previous

grand opening promotions at other locations have included gift card giveaways.

“They’re shooting to open for the Christmas season so I suspect it’s the October timeframe,” said Maldonado, who now has a 10-year lease in place with At Home for the Kennewick location. At Home is valued at $1.1 billion and is publicly traded.

Parkway Construction and Architecture, which has offices in Texas and California, is the general contractor.