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Tillicum Lowe’s to hold hiring fair; looking for up to 160 staff

Lowe’s is about to breathe new life into Tillicum shopping centre and send a ripple through the local economy as the home-improvement giant prepares to hire as many as 160 people.
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Work continues on Lowe's, which is being reconfigured from a former Target store at Tillicum mall.

Lowe’s is about to breathe new life into Tillicum shopping centre and send a ripple through the local economy as the home-improvement giant prepares to hire as many as 160 people.

The store, being reconfigured within the footprint of what, until spring 2015, was a Target location in the mall, intends to hire for most of its positions at a two-day career fair.

Last year, Lowe’s announced it was buying 13 Target Canada leases plus a distribution centre near Toronto for about $151 million. It has since opened Lowe’s stores in New Westminster and Abbotsford with plans to open in Nanaimo, Prince George and Victoria.

“The majority of the roles will be filled at the fair,” said store manager Tony Cooper, who has been with Lowe’s for the last four years in southern Ontario. “We are looking for passionate people who want to serve our customers — customer service is our bread and butter. We pride ourselves on that.”

The fair will run Aug. 12-13 in the upper level of the mall, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. on Aug. 12 and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Aug. 13.

Positions available range from department managers and sales specialists to cashiers and receiving clerks.

Jobs are not likely to start for a while, as Lowe’s anticipates opening in late fall .

“Things are going great, things are on schedule,” said Cooper when asked about the $3-million retrofit job of transforming the space from department store to big-box home-improvement location.

Tradespeople have been at work for the last three months on the project.

Cooper said it is a unique location for a Lowe’s store, as most of them are standalone structures that are built-to-suit. The Tillicum store is two levels and ties into a mall. “But we will have a full product offering compared to our traditional big-box stores,” he said.

The store has about 93,000 square feet of retail space on the two levels, with lumber and heavy building materials on the ground floor and other products on the second level.

“We will have a full selection of lumber in the building,” Cooper said, noting that has been one of the most common questions he’s been asked since the store location was announced.

Lumber delivery will be possible through large doors on the ground floor facing the two-level parkade between Tillicum and Pearkes Recreation Centre.

There will also be entrances from the second level onto the Tillicum Road parking lot and from inside the mall as well.

Cooper said the store is ideally suited to compete with other big names in the region.

“This is a great, prime location to service our customers versus other home improvement retailers that are nearby and which are something of a commute,” he said. “Our proximity and location is more central to Victoria.”

Lowe’s says it serves more than 17 million customers a week in Canada, U.S. and Mexico in 2,355 stores and reports annual sales close to $60 billion.

The company also operates five Rona stores on the Island, including one in Langford.

aduffy@timescolonist.com