St. Vincent de Paul plans second store in Weston as donations outgrow Wausau site
The Wausonian sat down with St. Vincent's director and got the full scoop on the new building
This Wausau business story is sponsored by:
The Wausau Business Incubator is ready to give your business the space and support it needs to grow.
A short time ago, The Wausonian got a tip that St. Vincent de Paul had bought land in Weston with the intent of building a new facility there.
So The Wausonian dug into the real estate transactions and sure enough, the organization bought the land in October for $230,000. The wooded lot sits next to ALDI on Birch Street, wooded and undeveloped.
Naturally, we reached out to the director of St. Vincent de Paul, Keith Ende, to ask more questions.
Ende invited The Wausonian to sit down for an interview.
From that interview, The Wausonian learned that St. Vincent de Paul is planning to build a second location. Why? Because it can’t keep up with the amount of donations it’s receiving.
Ende shared the details with The Wausonian, the only publication to publish the full story so far.
A second St. Vincent de Paul location
Right now, Ende says the Wausau store can’t keep up with the numbers of donations that have been pouring in, and while that’s a good thing — it means people are donating knowing it goes to a worthwhile cause — their warehouse is already full.
St. Vincent right now has semi-trailers full of stored donations that Kolbe and Kolbe allows them to store on their property. That’s because the store’s current 24,000 square feet (split 50-50 between the storefront and the warehouse) can’t keep up. They expected to work through those stored donations over the winter but more donations kept coming in. “We can’t sell it fast enough out of the store and it’s piling up.”
That demand means a second location makes sense. “We really don’t want to turn anybody away when they want to donate to us, because we want to be consistent for people,” Ende says.
The project
The new store is estimated to cost between $5-7 million, Ende confirmed to The Wausonian. St. Vincent de Paul is currently meeting with construction companies, and as of the interview hadn’t selected one yet.
The idea is to start small with the second location, Ende says, but to build it with possible expansion in mind.
One concern, Ende said, is that the Weston site is not on a bus route, which could affect access for some shoppers or program participants.
The organization plans to meet one-on-one with key donors as its next step, before launching a broader campaign to the public.
Ende says the new store could bring as many as 12 new employees to the Wausau area to start. The current store location has 27 employees.
What St. Vincent de Paul does
Shoppers roam the aisles on a Monday afternoon, browsing through everything from mattresses to cameras to clothing. Ende shows me a Nikon D90 camera with lenses that a donor brought in.
The storefront is essentially a thrift store, but with some new furniture that comes from donations via Ashley Furniture. But the store is also a lot more than that.
One of the programs St. Vincent de Paul has been operating is the Getting Ahead program, in which people low-income residents with with a classroom facilitator to help them overcome barriers and learn how to build a more sustainable life. There is now a Spanish-speaking class too.
“They kind of hold each other accountable,” Ende says. “You know, ‘Hey, did you go to that job interview?’”
That led to the Staying Ahead program which focuses on graduates from the previous program. That program now has 102 graduates from the Getting Ahead program.
There’s also a recycling element. While the store tries to sell its donated items quickly. An item stays on shelves for two weeks at full price, before gradually dropping in price until it is 99 cents. Then the items are either scrapped or recycled. They also do things such as baling clothing, which is then sold by the pound to companies that might turn it into insulation, rags or other products.
Steps ahead
The new store is a few years off — the land needs to be cleared and then building needs to start. But Ende tells The Wausonian that St. Vincent de Paul doesn’t want to wait too long. “We don’t want to be sitting on it, you know, 2031, 2032,” Ende says. “We want to be able to do something in the near future because we’re just simply running out of space here.”
The Wausonian will continue following the project as St. Vincent de Paul moves through fundraising, planning and possible construction.
Thanks for reading The Wausonian! If you haven’t subscribed yet, check out the free and paid options below to help support local journalism: