ELY- Inside the former Zup’s building, boxes of hardware inventory are stacked, waiting for their contents to be unpacked onto shelving. The quiet inside is interrupted every few minutes by the sound of electric power tools. The interior of the structure looks more like a hardware store and less like a remodeling project by the day.
For over four decades, J&L Hardware has been shoehorned into a long narrow space on Chapman Street, alongside its sister business, Ben Franklin Craft and Rental. All that is about to change as the Poshak family completes remodeling their new and vastly larger hardware store location in the old Zup’s building just off the corner of 3rd and Sheridan.
Their original opening date of Jan. 1 is less than two weeks away and it will likely be a nail-biter. According to Jay Poshak, whether they can open by then depends on getting all the pieces of the store up and running in time. The store’s point-of-sale system, for example, needs to be operational before the store can open for business, but with supply chain delays and the approaching holiday, that might not happen before the end of the year.
New location
The Poshak family has owned and managed J&L Hardware since 1976. They bought the former Zup’s and Northland Market buildings in early fall 2021 with the intent of moving out of their cramped space on Chapman Street.
The husband-and-wife team of Jay and Jacki have been planning for a while to expand into new store locations. Those plans have been many years in the making, as revealed by their shelving purchases two years before they bought the Zup’s and Northland properties. The Poshaks bought hundreds of feet of shelving from the Ely Shopko and Family Dollar stores when they closed.
Activity at the former Zup’s building has been proceeding for most of the year. “We purchased the buildings around a year ago,” said Jacki Bregier-Poshak. We started remodeling at the end of March and we started stocking inventory around Nov. 1.” When the Timberjay visited the new location, Jay was installing a paint-products display while Jacki and her son Kale were stocking inventory.
The new hardware store location will allow the Poshak’s to carry many more items. “We’re expanding a lot of our product lines,” said Jay Poshak. “I used to only stock a few tires and now I have the room to carry a lot more.” Poshak remarked that the new 21,000 square-foot store location will allow the business to expand their sporting goods, fishing gear, and rentals lines, to name just a few.
Rebranding
The new hardware store will have a new name, KJ’s True Value Hardware. When Jay’s parents opened the original store on Chapman Street in 1976, they named it J&L Hardware. The initials were those of Jay’s parents, Jerry and Linda. Jay and Jacki bought out Jay’s parents in 2015.
The name of the new hardware store is based on the current Poshak family: J for Jay and Jacki, and K for their two children, Kale and Kamryn.
Future plans
Only the hardware side of the family businesses will be housed at the former Zup’s store. The dry goods and craft business will remain at the Chapman Street location for now. The Poshaks intend to get the new True Value store up and running. Then they will begin work on remodeling the former Northland Market building, which will become the new home for the dry goods and craft business.