The improving economy is making things difficult for one Johnston County non-profit.
Developers are taking the Clayton building that houses the store that the Johnston County chapter of Habitat for Humanity uses to generate revenue for its projects.
Although the organization has found a new location for its store, it's going to have to find a way to fill that new store with merchandise to sell because it can't afford to move its current stock of items from Clayton to Smithfield.
The store has already sold about 25 percent of its stock at reduced prices, but there’s still a lot of material left.
“We’re hoping to do a sell-off on most of the inventory we have here,” explained Kaye Hatch, the president of the Johnston County chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
After five years in the old spinning mill building behind the Post Office in downtown Clayton, Habitat must vacate the location because it has development potential.
“The current owners are going to renovate this back into restaurants, shops and markets,” Hatch said. “So it’ll be a cool, happening place for downtown Clayton.”
Because the organization depends entirely on volunteer labor, it doesn’t have enough people, time or money to rent enough trucks to move its entire inventory out of Clayton to its new location.
Once Habitat sells everything in the old mill, it is free to move to the new location in Smithfield. But that facility will open virtually empty.
That empty store could be a financial problem because, until the organization gets more merchandise to sell, it loses its revenue stream.
“Financially you’re looking at several thousand dollars a month impact on us,” Hatch said. “That’s important because we are not a very big organization.”
The new store is going to be located in the Rose Manor Shopping Mall, which currently sits vacant on Highway 70 in Smithfield.
Habitat hopes by locating its new store there, it will help revitalize the area the same it way it revitalizes old homes to make them livable once again.
“With this, we’ll be able to continue to help fund Habitat house building,” said volunteer Rob Crumley, who spent Tuesday evening in the new location doing carpentry work. “In turn I think it will help revitalize this area as it continues to grow and expand,”
Habitat hopes to open its new Smithfield store by mid-March.
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