Allison Boer, Big Lot’s district team leader for the discount chain’s stores along the Central Valley and Central Coast, stands in the newest Valley store at the corner of Noth Blackstone and West Pinedale avenues in north Fresno. Photos by David Castellon

Just a little over a week after it opened, Fresno’s most recently relocated Big Lots store will have its grand opening on Friday.

The store, in the former Babies R Us storefront on the northeast corner of North Blackstone and West Pinedale avenues, just south of the River Park shopping center, opened in the renovated building on Sept. 5, the day after the Big Lots at 3520 W. Shaw Ave. shut down.

 

Last year, two other Big Lots stores in Fresno and Clovis shut down and moved to bigger locations, one to a former Rite Aid store in Clovis and one to a vacated Toys R Us storefront in northwest Fresno.

The new store on Blackstone, at 37,700 square feet, also is larger than the previous 25,500 square-foot store on Shaw.

Allison Boer, Big Lot’s district team leader for the discount chain’s stores along the Central Valley and Central Coast, said the moves are part of a plan to make roomier, less cluttered stores, as well as to make more room for furniture, which has become a larger part of the Ohio-based chain’s inventory.

She said customers to the new north Fresno store are responding well to the new look, as “They talk about how open it is and clutter free.”
As part of Friday’s grand opening, the first 50 customers coming in when doors open at 9 a.m. will receive prizes.

As for the other Big Lots stores in the Valley, there are no plans to relocate any, but the one on Kings Canyon Road in south Fresno and the other stores in Visalia, Tulare, Hanford, Reedley and Merced all are currently being remodeled, Boer said.