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After over 50 years of serving customers out of its Valley Plaza store, Workbench True Value Hardware will be shutting its doors this Saturday and consolidating the business with its downtown Pleasanton location.
Fred Nichandros, who owns the longstanding hardware store, said that while he appreciates the community for supporting the store for so many years, it was always in the company’s plans to close the Santa Rita Road location and expand operations at the other Pleasanton location — just over a mile away on Main Street.
“Over the years the business has been shifting to Main Street so at this time it makes sense to consolidate them,” Nichandros told the Weekly.
Located at Santa Rita Road and Valley Avenue, the hardware store has been open since the late 1970s with newspaper ads dating back to as early as 1977. Nichandros said he still remembers sheep grazing around the neighborhood during those early days.
“The town has really changed since that store opened,” he said.
Over the decades, Nichandros said the hardware store developed a strong and reliable customer base, which has remained strong over the years, and that people genuinely enjoyed shopping at that longstanding hardware store.
However, he said he had always planned to combine the two stores once he signed the lease and opened the second Pleasanton location at 652 Main St. back in 2013.
“We weren’t planning to keep that store open when we opened Main Street,” Nichandros said of the Valley Plaza location.
One of the main reasons he didn’t do so at the time was because of that strong customer base at the Valley Plaza location and the amount of business he was seeing there. But now, with the market changing and more customers gravitating toward the downtown Pleasanton location, Nichandros said it was finally time to see those consolidation plans through.
“Business has been moving over to Main Street over the years and it’s finally reached a point where … it’s time to put them together, which is what we’ve been trying to do from the get go,” he said. “We’re going to complete our original plan of working out of that store.”
And while Nichandros said he can see how shutting down a store that has been open for over 50 years can seem like a notable thing in the community, he wanted to be clear that this move will be a positive for the city because now the Main Street location, which is twice as big as the Santa Rita store, will offer so much more services, tools and overall hardware needs.
“It’s not like they’re losing a hardware store,” Nichandros said. “Our goal was to make (the Main Street store) bigger to be able to have more room for merchandise space.”
Still, he acknowledged all of the customers who have stopped by the Santa Rita location and said he has appreciated all of their business over the years.
“Thanks to everyone who’s been shopping at Santa Rita … and we’ll see you down at Main Street,” Nichandros said.
We will miss you! You all have such helpful and knowledgeable employees. I hope they will move over to the Main Street store.