The area’s first Ocean State Job Lot store will open Monday, bringing back a retail philosophy reminiscent of the former Building 19 that left Nashua two years ago.

Workers inside the former Bradlee’s Department Store building in the Main Street Marketplace workers were unpacking merchandise and stocking shelves on Thursday for what store manager Scott Saucier described as “adventure shopping,” a term he said is often associated with the chain.

Clothing, housewares and even kayaks were on display in the building, which has been renovated extensively.

Saucier said 40 people have been hired and the store continues to interview prospective employees, both full- and part-time. The Rhode Island-based chain sells overruns, overstocks and close-outs of manufacturers’ products in a wide variety of market segments, ranging from food and clothing to air conditioners and camping equipment.

Its product line is similar to Building 19, the Massachusetts firm that shut its Nashua store in 2012 before going bankrupt. Ocean State Job Lot is much larger, with 115 stores throughout the Northeast.

This will be the 11th Ocean State Job Lot in New Hampshire. The closest is in Derry. The closest Massachusetts store is in Tewksbury.

“We believe this will be a great opportunity for us, as well as the community, to show what we sell,” Saucier said.

Ocean State Job Lot opened in 1977 as a single store in North Kingstown, R.I.

Weeks of heavy construction work have taken place at the plaza at 300 Main St., which has previously been named Globe Plaza and, originally, Simoneau Plaza.

Much of that construction involved drainage and foundation work to correct problems that date to the creation of Simoneau Plaza, which opened in 1963 as Nashua’s first shopping center with Bradlee’s as an anchor store.

Part of the plaza was built on filled wetlands and over the former Harbor Pond, a popular place for ice skating before it became polluted by industrial waste. Simoneau Plaza struggled for decades with the land settling that caused cracked parking lots and uneven floors.

Bradlee’s, in particular, was known as a place where unattended shopping carts would roll away by themselves. The store shut in 2001, and its portion of the plaza was largely empty until now.

The plaza’s management company, 300 Main Street Realty LLC, told the Telegraph previously that some 50,000 square feet of new floor was installed to fix the situation.

Don Himsel can be reached at 594-6590 or dhimsel@nashuatelegraph.com.