The Lowdown on the Brewer Lowe's
Saturday, January 05, 2008

While shoppers are not expected for another month, the parking lot was nearly full this past Monday at the new Lowe’s on outer Wilson Street in Brewer.

Crews inside the massive building could be seen working on metal shelving, and managers were showing new employees the ropes at the new home-improvement retail store, which is tentatively scheduled to open Feb. 1.

"We received all our steel trees today," store manager Bob Ahearn said of the shelving while standing inside the new store, which smelled of fresh paint.

With crews working nine-hour days, all of the shelving was expected to be up in five days, and the first load of merchandise is scheduled to arrive Monday, he said.

"Our goal is to be open the first week of February," Ahearn said. "Nothing is holding us back."

The build-it-yourself home-improvement company announced plans for the Brewer locale in April 2006 and received planning board approval for the project in October 2006.

Ahearn got the keys to the 139,410-square-foot retail center and 31,659-square-foot garden center last week.

Around 150 employees, both full-time and year-round part-time, have been hired.

"Almost every one of our employees is from the Bangor area," Ahearn said. "Every one of my managers is from Maine. My zone three manager grew up in Newburgh, and he still lives there. We like that."

The Brewer store is slightly different from most of the 1,250 big-box Lowe’s stores nationwide, because it has a decorative glass feature on the front of the building — a request from planners to match Brewer’s rural character — and it has a blue-beige color scheme and a varied roof canopy.

Entry to the 19.3-acre site will be gained at the new traffic light on outer Wilson Street, just before Interstate 395, at the street’s junction with the northern end of Dirigo Drive. A 300-foot dedicated right-turn lane into the site is included for those traveling into Brewer from Holden.

An underground storm-water runoff filtering system that collects and filters parking lot water is another feature of the approximately $18 million project.

The garden center will be open in February, but March is when customers should expect to see an abundance of growing plants, Ahearn said.

"All our garden stuff is local," he said. "We go as local as possible."

Ahearn, who is from Augusta and went to school at the University of Maine, has managed the Newington, Conn., Lowe’s store for the last two years. He said he jumped at the chance to return home to Maine.

"The opportunity presented itself, [and] I asked to move back," Ahearn said. "This store is really where I want to be."

Ahearn and his wife have bought a home in Holden and live there with their 6-year-old daughter. His family showed up at the store Monday afternoon, and his daughter was seen in the back seat wearing a red Lowe’s hard hat and a huge smile.

A copyright story from the Bangor Daily News, Saturday, January 5, 2008.