AUBURN — National retailer Sports Authority will open its second Maine store in Center Street’s Auburn Plaza, a company representative confirmed Monday.
The store will be located in a building at the southwestern corner of the 23.5-acre Auburn Plaza complex. That complex is currently home to T.J. Maxx, Big Lots, Craftmania, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Lumber Liquidators.
A company representative, who declined to be named, said the store should open in November. The company is taking applications for sales associate and cashier positions online, at jobs.sportsauthority.com
Sports Authority is one of the largest national sporting goods retail chains, with more than 450 stores in 45 states. The company has one other location in Maine, in the Maine Mall in South Portland.
Sports Authority competes nationally with a handful of other sporting good retailers, including Dick’s Sporting Goods — which has stores in Augusta, Topsham and South Portland.
The plaza is currently owned by a private real estate holding group, GFI Auburn Plaza Realty, and managed by Boston-based CRE Management. GFI purchased the complex in 2003 from local developer George Schott. At the time, the company took out a $8.1 million mortgage to purchase the property.
The store is about a half-mile from the city’s dual-surface ice arena that Schott is building on Turner Street.
Al Manoian, Auburn’s economic development specialist, said he thinks the rink’s location could have helped bring in the sporting goods retailer.
“The corporate site selectors that do this type of work for large concerns like Sports Authority, these are the types of characteristics that they target in on,” Manoian said. “My gut sense, you will see the ice arena become a magnet to many types of similar enterprises.”
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- Derrick Brousseau of Allaire Drywall of Sabattus takes a measurement for the metal caps for the facade of what will soon be the Sports Authority store that is scheduled to open in September in the Auburn Plaza, where the Older Independence of Maine was located.
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