This building is essentially the anchor of the downtown retail district, and the community at large found it a handy location to purchase items needed quickly for repairs and all types of hardware needs in the central part of the city. It’s just a few blocks off of the residential areas, and at the edge of what is essentially a financial district in Webster City.

Bernau Capital Management, who purchased the building and will be managing the franchise, is working directly with Ace Hardware corporate offices to get the facility ready. Bernau Capital Management is owned by Tom Bernau, a multi-franchise operator based out of West Des Moines.

According to Kim Drautz, who is with Bernau Capital Management and operations manager for the Ace Hardware project, the corporate team has already been here, scanning the building and preparing a design to determine the store layout, where equipment will be placed, and ordering product.

“Ace is very involved with the store layout,” said Drautz. “That scan team uses AI, and provides a 3-D rendering.”

The rendering will identify not only the store layout, but also the placement of all the inventory. “All the inventory will be new,” said Drautz.

Bernau Capital Management bought the building and shelving, but none of the remaining inventory from the True Value store.

“We are starting to order product to be delivered in late March and April,” she continued. “It will be all ACE branded.”

The steps to getting a building open takes more than a store front and inventory, of course. Behind the scenes, a lot of work is being done.

“All of the city ordinances are being tackled this week, so when product is delivered we will be ready to go.”

But that part takes people.

“Our goal is to be open by June 1,” she said. “But there is a lot of work to get that done. The first step is having someone within the community and getting people hired. And they help decide what special inventory needs there are for the community.”

Drautz said they are on schedule for staffing the store.

“ACE has a very robust hiring system, they send it out to multiple channels where we have job postings,” she explained. “We did that almost a month ago, and we had several candidates applied.”

The next visible sign will be the installation of a temporary sign. Old signage should start disappearing within the next few weeks.

“Our branding will be evident by March 15,” she said.

Ace will be the place with the helpful hardware folks, right here in downtown Webster City.