Popular Elgin outlet hoping to ReStore order
By Janelle Walker For The Courier-News January 31, 2012 9:16PM
Volunteer Tom Armstrong of Elgin builds shelving Tuesday at Habitat for Humanity's ReStore in Elgin. | Andrew A. Nelles~For Sun-Times Media
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Updated: March 2, 2012 8:12AM
ELGIN — For the next few weeks, Elgin’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore is asking customers to “excuse our dust.”
The nearly-6-year-old retail store is doing some rearranging to open up the store, improve its marketing and open up space for a future project to be announced. This is the third big change for the store, one of the most successful of its kind in the country and the largest and most profitable of Habitat ReStores in the region.
But at the same time, the store is in dire need of volunteers, said manager Deanna Davies.
ReStore, the retail arm of Habitat for Humanity of the Northern Fox Valley, accepts donations of home construction, decorating and remodeling materials, then resells those materials for about half the market value. Proceeds from those sales then go into home construction — or in more recent times, renovation of foreclosed homes — in the Fox Valley.
Elgin’s ReStore opened in April 2006 in another section of the building it is now housed in at 800 N. State St. (Route 31). But that location ran out of space in just two years.
The store closed for three months and reopened in its present location in April 2008.
But after a few years, the agency discovered there wasn’t adequate room to process the amount of donations coming in the door, Davies said.
“We shrunk the sales floor to open up our processing area,” Davies said.
That sales floor is what is being reorganized now, to make the area more visually appealing and open up sight lines.
The furniture area — now hidden behind racks of home goods and tools — will become front and center when customers walk in the front door, Davies said.
The lighting and electricity area — one of ReStore Elgin’s largest and most successful areas — will be expanded to the back wall as well.
Another wall will be removed to open up the area where cabinets and appliances now sit, and trim and molding will be moved closer to the doors and windows.
All the moving, however, comes with another need for volunteers.
On Tuesday — typically a closed day for the store, which is open Wednesday through Saturday — many of those working were from Community Restitution.
ReStore gets some volunteers through Kane County’s court restitution program — people who must work community service hours as part of their court sentencing.
The city of Elgin has also been generous over the years, allowing those who are working with Elgin public works for their community service to come over and help at ReStore.
Elgin Community Restitution workers, in fact, did a majority of the heavy lifting when the store first moved, Davies said.
How long this latest rearrangement will take — over the course of several Tuesdays — depends on the number of community service workers ReStore can get, she said.
But the need for volunteers has limited the store’s ability to get those donations out on the floor, she added.
“All of the sudden, we will get a huge donation of one particular thing, and we have to find room to put it out, so people can buy it,” Davies said.
“We need more volunteers, and we need regular volunteers” who are wiling to work, she said. “They don’t need to have a particular talent or ability per se, but be willing to help.
“I want people to come here and have fun and be comfortable, but we have a lot of work that needs to be done,” she said.
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