Two weeks to opening day: Kenai Walmart store getting its final finishing touches
They're doing some last minute tidying at 10096 Kenai Spur Highway.
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"We're just doing the regular house-keeping stuff like you would do before your mother comes to visit," said Lianne Adams, "like cleaning the floors and making sure there's toilet paper."
That would be easy, except they're going to need approximately 30 pallets of toilet paper. Not to mention seven pallets of cracker products, 300 cases of Coca-Cola, 8,000 towels, 8,000 sets of linens and enough supply of whatever else it will take to make their visitors happy.
The Spur Highway address is where the Kenai Walmart is located, Adams is a store planner and the March 31 ribbon cutting is two weeks away -- planned for 7:30 a.m. -- when visitors may be all but busting down the doors.
Store Manager Ferdinand Dominic said the 236,000-square foot facility is about 80 percent completed and will be ready by deadline. An average Walmart Supercenter is 186,000 square feet.
Stouffer's dinners already fill some of the freezers, bicycles are stacked to the ceiling, several varieties of coffee line some of the shelves and the television display flash images, waiting to lure eager techies.
But Walmart's current 294 employees still have a lot to do.
"Retail is detail," Dominic said. "It's the small things that often get overlooked when you are coming into the last push." Little things include making sure there are no marks on the recycled-cement floor, setting prices, stocking perishable items when it's time and building the end-cap features. End-cap features are the displays at the end of the aisles.
Pam Amador, a zone merchandise supervisor, was working on an end-cap cereal display Tuesday morning. Amador has been in retail for more than 30 years. She helped set up the K-Mart store in Kenai.
"The excitement around town is the same if not more than when we opened that up," Amador said. "They felt it as a loss when K-Mart did pull out."
That excitement could put a lot of pressure on Dominic and Walmart's employees.
"The biggest challenge is living up to the expectations of the community," Dominic said. On a busy Saturday afternoon, Dominic expects about half the store's nearly 300 employees will be working. About 80 percent of the positions are full time, according to Dominic. Full-time means the employee works 34 or more hours per week. All but a handful of the store's employees are locals, the store manager says.
One transplant is Pam Burns. Burns came to Kenai from Pennsylvania specifically to work at the new Walmart. Burns wanted to come to Alaska because her daughter now lives in the last frontier after moving here for military service.
Burns was also setting up end-caps Tuesday. As a seasoned Walmart employee, Burns said she knows a thing or two about store setup disasters. She recalled a time when she was helping to open a new store in Ohio, and some of the shelves weren't built correctly.
"It buckled," Burns said. "And the root beer sprayed all over the floors."
So far, Dominic said his crew has avoided catastrophe. Employee Larry Frantz, a Soldotna resident who was packing freezers Tuesday, agreed.
"It's been fairly rapid and organized, and every workday you see more and more product," Frantz said. "I can't wait till it opens up. I can't wait to shop."
Some employees are so excited to shop at the store, they're already making lists, says zone merchandise supervisor Jay Keeley. Keeley, a U.S. Coast-Guard veteran, is responsible for stocking the fresh product section (many meats go there), which sits along a yellow wall on the store's south side.
Keeley knows as well as anyone that all Walmart employees's shopping lists are useless until they finish piling in the product.
"As soon as we get this yellow wall filled, I will be happy," Keeley said. "But that won't be filled until the day before we open."
Andrew Waite can be reached at andrew.waite@peninsulaclarion.com.