Sep

Morrisville Town and Country Hardware Being Replaced with WalMart Express

A reader named Mike recently alerted me to an interesting retail story going on in Morrisville. It seems that the Town and Country Hardware (“formerly Ace”) at Davis and Morrisville Carpenter is closing on October 31. According to employees, the store’s lease was not renewed and the replacement will be a Wal-Mart Express.

This is interesting on several levels. According to a News & Observer article in July, Wal-Mart has been rolling out 15,000 square foot stores in small towns to compete with large drug stores and Family Dollar stores. Morrisville, however, is suburbia, and there is a full-sized Wal-Mart store very close by at I-540 and 54.

Secondly, this is apparently a dagger to the local Ace Hardware system and consumers’ ability to maintain equipment. A year ago I my lawn mower needed repair, so I took it to the Ace Hardware on Kildaire Road late on a Saturday afternoon. It took the store a month to return the lawn mower because that store is not an actual service site. Rather, they sent all lawn mowers over to “the Davis Drive store” (presumably the one at hand). I’m not sure where Cary’s Ace is sending lawn mowers now, but if they are sending them to North Ridge, it will be 2 months to get one repaired.

It is extremely sad to see stores like this (that offer services to our appliances) drying up. It’s one thing to worry about the amount of garbage we could be composting, but it’s another thing to make servicing expensive items like TVs and lawn mowers so difficult that it is easier and/or cheaper to simply discard the item than to go through the service hassle.

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Steelcity36

Stick with Burke Bros. and you’ll never go wrong. I am in and out of that store in 5 minutes flat everytime. They are insulted if you decline their help looking for something. My days of spendng 30 minutes in a Home Depot or Lowes looking for somebody to tell me where somthing is are over!
Bluetiger

Ditto Steelcity36. I’ve had my lawnmower and other small equipment repaired at Burke Brothers and am always satisfied. But I agree it’s a shame that more small hardware stores can’t make a go of it.
Lee

I confirmed this with the Town of Morrisville inspections dept last week. They have a permit already.

The shopping center was going to be anchored by a Winn Dixie, but when it was being built (actually days before the steel was delivered) Winn Dixie declared bankruptcy and did not go,through with the store. They subdivided the space and put the Ace in. In the few years since the leftover 20,000 sf was never leased.

While many of us that lived nearby hoped for something like a Trader Joes to come in, when Wal Mart came coming it worth it to the landlord to actually buy the hardware store out of their lease early.
W. Jarrett Campbell

As a regular shopper at Town & Country, this is both disappointing and surprising. With a Walmart Neighborhood Market going in a Hwy 55 and High House in the former Kroger shopping center, this is an odd development.
DougInNC

ACE Hardware has definitely taken a hit in the Raleigh-Cary area. The Kildaire store in the post is no longer an Ace affiliate, as of early this summer. That store and 7 or 8 others became split from the number one (“ace”) hardware chain, and I was told it was over franchise fees. If you want an Ace store, try two Raleigh stores, near the intersections of Capital Blvd and Peace, or Falls of Neuse and Spring Forest.
Joe Daughtry

Why is this so disappointing? Home Depot and Lowes have substantially more inventory than Ace. None of them are local brands. Ace may have felt like a local boutique, but it’s not, nor has it ever been. There are equipment companies in the Triangle much smaller than Ace that will appreciate your lawn mower repair business.
Anonymous

If there are equipment companies out there that are more appreciative of my business than ACE, PLEASE feel free to post your contact information in this thread (especially if you are open on nights and weekends)
Anonymous

I like it and shopped their when it was ACE. Town and Country is so different. Not be going back. Nothing but young kids working there today.