EDITOR’S NOTE: Several readers have pointed out that while Nashua has no Goodwill stores now, it was home to them in the past, including one on Main Street decades ago, and one in Greystone Plaza on Amherst Street that closed almost a decade ago.

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The big new retail store going up on Route 101A in Amherst has one major difference from all the big retail stores that exist around it: It needs customers not only to buy its goods but to supply them in the first place.

“We reflect the community: The donations that come there will stay there,” said Jane Driscoll, vice president of public affairs for Goodwill of Northern New England, which will open its first Nashua-area store Feb. 7.

The 17,884-square-foot store will generally sell about 65,000 items, roughly half clothing and the rest ranging from old film cameras to used books, toasters to toys, pottery to lots and lots of shoes. All are used and donated with the exception of a few items, such as socks and underwear, that Goodwill Industries buys.

The store’s design echoes that of the closest Goodwill stores, in Manchester and Hooksett, with a large covered drive-through donation area, where people can drop off items without having to leave their car. They will be processed, sorted, fixed and cleaned in an 11,000-square-foot addition to the store.

Such stores average about 2,300 to 2,500 customers a week, officials said.

The store is at 131 Route 101A, on the site of the former Amherst Plaza, which burned down June 12, 2008, and then sat as a charred hulk for years before it was demolished in May 2012.

Plans call for a separate bank and retail store to be built on the site.

This will be 27th store owned by Maine-based Goodwill of Northern New England, one of 175 autonomous Goodwill agencies in North America organized under the umbrella of Goodwill Industries International, a century-old nonprofit that started in Boston to provide goods for, and employment for, the poor.

The regional Goodwill covers Vermont as well as New Hampshire and Maine.

Goodwill of Northern New England has been looking to put a store near Nashua for a long time, said Robert LaGasse, district manager for Goodwill Industries of Northern New England.

“Nashua is perfect for us, the demographics, and this is a high-traffic road in a retail area,” he said.

“Some customers shop here because they need to, some customers shop here because they want to,” LeGasse said. “There’s no stigma to shopping at Goodwill any more.”

The organization’s model of combining community retail with community aid, is similar to that of the Salvation Army Thrift Stores. For-profit companies, such as Savers Thrift Stores, also have embraced the donations model.

Larry Bowman, manager for the new store, said selling donated items made for more complicated logistics.

“You can’t just pick up the phone, call the warehouse and say, we’re out of something, send more,” he said.

He gave an example: “If we don’t have enough ladies shoes, we’ll expand the men’s shoes … or move things around.”

In fact, he said, there’s a lot of moving around when managing a Goodwill store, because the company likes to make use of everything that comes in the door – either by selling it to customers, bundling it into piles sold by the pound at a warehouse in Gorham, or even shipping it overseas.

“There’s no Dumpster on site,” Bowman pointed out.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks’ blog on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).