A new home for the Bibles for Missions Thrift Store will provide more room for retail space and officials with the store say it will help the organization support causes in Okotoks and abroad.
Bibles for Missions broke ground July 15 on a new location for its Okotoks store on Stockton Avenue just west of 32 Street.
The new location will be a 17,400-square-foot, single-floor building with about 11,000 square feet dedicated to retail and the remaining space will be for sorting and receiving. It will be three times the size of its current 5,800 square-foot home on Elizabeth Street.
Steve Schaufele, chair of the Okotoks Bibles For Missions board, said it will give the store much needed room.
“We are bursting at the seams, we receive a lot more than we can handle and there’s a demand within the community,” he said.
Schaufele said the ground breaking was two months behind schedule, but they hope to have the new store open by January 2017.
The store currently has two full-time employees, one part-time and about 60 volunteers. Staffing levels will remain the same and he expects the number of volunteers to grow with the new building.
Dale Attrill, Bibles for Missions general manager, said the new location will allow them to expand their work, not just in the store but in support of those in need in the community.
The Bibles for Missions Foundation of Canada works in partnership with the Bible League of Canada using proceeds from sales to support children’s programs, adult literacy, supporting prison ministries and persecuted churches.
“It’s going to allow us to do the work that God’s called us to do to get more work, more money and more people into the mission field through our partnerships with the Bible League. It’s going to expand everything,” said Attrill.
Attrill said there isn’t much room in the current store for furniture and the new location will allow them to expand their selection.
“There’s a lot of people looking for furniture and we just don’t have the room to carry it, so we take as much as we can and some of it we have to turn back and hope people bring it back at another time when we have the room,” he said.
The store opened in its current location in November 2009.
Verna Thomas, who spearheaded work to open the store, said she always hoped Bible for Missions would grow in Okotoks.
“I always had it in my heart to have our own store, so after a few years we started looking around Okotoks and there was nothing that was available because we were too small,” he said.
She said there wasn’t much commercial space available in town when they first looked at expanding. She said they began considering purchasing land and found a location in the Okotoks Business Park.
They were able to secure the land for the new location with the help of the Bible For Missions Foundation’s real estate arm, meaning they will own the land the new store will call home.
Sharon Brandsma, Bibles for Missions Foundation of Canada Western Canadian director of store development, said Bibles For Missions is on track for $9.5 million profit in its 49 stores across the country, all of which goes back to programs in Canada and 42 other countries.
Brandsma said new Okotoks store has ties to Bibles for Mission’s earliest roots.
The building is being built by Eagle Builders from Blackfalds. Brandsma said the owners of the construction company are grandsons of the man who opened the first Bibles for Missions store in Chilliwack B.C.
“So, 27 years later they will be building… This is the project that has come full circle to bring the generations together,” she said.
