AVON — A $10 million JCPenney unlike any other in the region will open Sept. 26, bringing about 200 new jobs to the county.

“It doesn’t even look like a JCPenney’s. It’s a brand-new prototype,” company spokeswoman Sharon Loughner said.

The 104,000-square-foot store at the Avon Crossings retail development is buzzing this week as managers stock shelves and make a final round of hires, she said. It’s all-new territory because the building at state Route 83 and Chester Road sports an unconventional layout.

Merchandise can be found just inside the doors, with cash registers further back in the building, Loughner said. The JCPenney also features a store-within-a-store with a Sephora cosmetics retailer inside.

Sephora is a French cosmetics chain with more than 750 stores in the United States, including Strongsville and Crocker Park in Westlake. Loughner said JCPenney is retrofitting many of its old stores with Sephora shops, but the Avon store will be the first in the Cleveland region, which has 18 stores from the lakeshore to Akron.

Avon Mayor Jim Smith said he believes JCPenney will be a magnet for other development.

“We’re going to get more hotels out of it. We’re going to get more restaurants out of it. Then we want to get big office complexes out of it,” he said. “It’s a huge domino effect. You have to have all of it. There’s no such thing as just getting factory jobs and nothing else.”

Loughner wasn’t able to say Wednesday how many of the 200 new jobs at JCPenney will be full-time or part-time, but Smith said it doesn’t matter. He said jobs are jobs —  and all of them are welcome to the local economy.

“It’s a huge domino effect. You have to have all of it,” Smith said. “There’s no such thing as just getting factory jobs and nothing else.”

The Avon store is one of 36 the company plans to open in 2008. Like the one here, almost all the new stores are free-standing “off-mall” locations.

JCPenney reported Wednesday that its 1,000 stores across the country made $1.5 billion in sales in August, which is a 4.9-percent decline over July figures. Loughner said the company is performing very well considering the state of the economy.

A grand opening and ribbon-cutting will be 8:30 a.m. Oct. 3 at the Avon store, after which JCPenney plans to donate $5,000 for after-school programs to the local Boys and Girls Clubs.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

 

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