DAYTONA BEACH — The longtime Sam’s Club store here will close its current location on Beville Road in late July or early August and reopen in its new building that’s nearing completion on LPGA Boulevard near Interstate 95, the store’s general manager has confirmed.
The new store is located just north of Tanger Outlets mall and is part of the 235-acre Tomoka Town Center that includes a separate “power lifestyle” shopping center that is being developed by North American Development Group.
Sam’s isn’t the only local store to relocate to Tomoka Town Center. Others that have already made the move include Burlington, Hobby Lobby, TJ Maxx and Ross Dress For Less.
Plans for the soon-to-be-vacated store have yet to be announced by parent company Walmart Stores Inc., said Sam’s Club General Manager Mike Mitchener. “I’m not sure what their intentions are,” he said.
What is known is that the current store’s 175 employees will be transferred to the new location, though some may choose not to make the move.
“Our intentions are to transfer everybody,” said Mitchener.
The new 140,000-square-foot store is roughly the same size as the current Daytona Beach Sam’s Club that opened in 1991 six miles to the south at 1175 Beville Road, according to Mitchener.
It is the only new Sam’s Club store that the membership warehouse chain plans to open in North America this year, confirmed Laura Poff, a spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based chain. The chain is, however, opening some e-commerce “fulfillment centers,” including one planned in Tampa.
John Albright, the president and CEO of Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co., the company that sold the site off LPGA where the new Sam’s Club is set to soon open, said he believes it will prove to be a good move for the membership warehouse chain.
“Clearly, they jumped to a better site that’s more central to (the area’s) population growth,” he said.