BREWER – The new Lowe’s on outer Wilson Street will open its doors to customers for the first time early Sunday.

The 117,000-square-foot store with an adjacent 31,000-square-foot garden center will open at 6 a.m. with more than 40,000 items on the shelves.

The new home improvement retail store, which cost approximately $18.5 million to build, is the second Lowe’s to open in the area. The Ellsworth store about 25 miles southeast of Brewer opened Jan. 1.

About 150 people have been hired to work at the Brewer Lowe’s.

The build-it-yourself home improvement company announced plans for the Brewer store in April 2006 and received planning board approval for the project in October 2006.

Store manager Bob Ahearn got the keys to the building on Dec. 28. Building shelves and stocking the store have taken the last month.

A new traffic light has been installed where outer Wilson Street, just before the Interstate 395 interchange, intersects with the entrance to the 19.3-acre site at 15 Arista Drive and the northern end of Dirigo Drive.

For those traveling into Brewer from Holden, a 300-foot dedicated right-turn lane turns into the site just after the I-395 interchange.

The Brewer store is different from most of the 1,250 Lowe’s stores nationwide because it has a decorative glass feature on the front of the building – a request from planners to match Brewer’s rural character – and it has a blue-beige color scheme and a varied roof canopy.

The Ellsworth Lowe’s is located at 21 Kingsland Crossing off High Street in the community’s downtown.

Other Lowe’s stores are located in Auburn, Augusta, Biddeford, Brunswick, Portland, Presque Isle, Scarborough and Windham, and stores are planned for Bangor and Belfast.

nricker@bangordailynews.net

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