2nd Ace Hardware coming to Loveland

LOVELAND — A second Ace Hardware location in Loveland will open early in 2025, according to the owner of both stores.

Brett Stephenson, whose Ace Hardware Home Centers LLC owns the store at 269 E. 29th St. in the Orchards shopping center, will open a 10,000-square-foot Ace Hardware outlet — the same size as the 36-year-old Orchards store — at 1195 Eagle Drive in the Thompson Valley Towne Center.

The new location is the former home of Thompson Valley Liquors, which closed last spring after the adjacent King Soopers grocery store began selling wine and full-strength beer.

“We’re shooting to open in late March. We’ve been working to get into this shopping center for a little over 20 years,” said Stephenson, who started working at the Orchards store as a high school student when it opened in 1988. One of his first duties was assembling bicycles and trampolines.

Stephenson became a district manager in 1993 for Ace, a chain which was founded in 1924 in Chicago and is headquartered in suburban Oak Brook, Illinois.

“I worked for the corporation until 2002, then took time off and had a family,” Stephenson said. “I came back to a partnership situation here in 2004 and bought the remaining stock in 2019.”

Ace Hardware Home Centers LLC also operates two stores in Greeley and one each in Windsor, Aurora, Edgewater, Highlands Ranch and Lakewood.

“We’re about three-fourths through the construction side” in the new location, Stephenson said. “We expect to take possession Dec. 14, and then it’ll be six to seven weeks to get it ready to open for retail.”

He has hired Creative Construction, Dilse Technology and Western Electrical to do the tenant finish, and said he expects to hire 17 to 20 people at the new store.

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