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Former toy store sold

New Harbor Freight to open in Boardman

BOARDMAN — The former Toys R Us store here has been sold to a developer with plans to subdivide the 47,000-square-foot building for a California-based discount tool chain and another retailer to occupy.

The developer is “basically going to put in a store that sells tools; they have 1,200 stores,” said Bill Kutlick with Platz Realty Group, the Canfield-based commercial real estate firm that handled the deal. “The balance of the space is available for lease.”

According to the Boardman Zoning and Planning Department, Harbor Freight, headquartered in Calabasas, Calif., was given a zoning permit Oct. 11 for the location at 317 Boardman Poland Road.

It would be the company’s third store in Trumbull and Mahoning counties, with the others in Warren and in Austintown. Harbor Freight, founded in 1977, also has a store in Middlefield among the 1,200 across the U.S.

The $2 million sale finalized Wednesday.

According to the Mahoning County Auditor’s Office, 317 Boardman Poland Road LLC purchased the building for $1.5 million in January 2019 from Tru Trust 2016 LLC. Toys R Us bought the property, about 5.8 acres, in October 1986 for $435,000.

The building, built in 1987, most recently had temporary pop-up tenants such as Bin Voyage and Spirit Halloween. It had been on the market for almost 10 months, Kutlick said. The iconic toy store chain closed its Boardman and Niles locations after filing for bankruptcy in September 2017.

“When a building is vacant, we look for temporary tenants to fill the space until we have a national chain for a long-term lease and that’s where Bin Voyage and Spirit Halloween fit in. They were never slated to stay as a permanent tenant,” Kutlick said.

Harbor Freight will take up about 20,000 square feet of the building. Tenants are interested in the remaining space, but nothing has been formalized, Kutlick said.

Kutlick said there is also a tentative deal in place for the former Goldsteins Furniture on Boardman Poland Road that is expected to finalize in the first quarter of 2022.

Both buildings are within a prime retail zone from Interstate 680 west to the former play store that also includes big-box retailers the likes of Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target and Best Buy.

“All we do is commercial real estate and these boxes sit for a while, but the location warrants the attention of the national retailers when they are looking in this area,” Kutlick said.

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