Patience seems to finally have paid off for Brad and J Johnson, owners of Johnson’s Home and Garden in Maple Valley.

Crews began work in April on the site where the new hardware store will go just north of where the business sits now.

“They started in April tearing down the buildings,” Brad Johnson said. “Since then, they’ve been grading the site. Hopefully by maybe the first of next year we might have a building to move into and a few months after that we might be able to open.”

Johnson said he hasn’t allowed himself to get excited yet for the new building, which will be 35,000 square feet, because the wait for construction to start on it has been close to a decade.

“It’s been so long, I’m still not quite believing it’s really going to happen,” Johnson said. “Until I see some walls going up I’m not sure how excited I’m going to be. We’re all very excited around here to be able to have a new, modern building, to be able to spread out some of our merchandise, to be able to merchandise better, to have customer flow be better.”

There will be a green house that will allow for plans to be in the garden area for more than a couple months when the weather cooperates and doesn’t rain. There will be more parking as well as easier access to the store.

Johnson’s Home and Garden has been in its current location since 1979 and in Maple Valley since 1969.

At one point Indianapolis-based Kite Realty, which owns Four Corner Square where Johnson’s is located, was ready to walk away from redeveloping the commercial plaza. This was due a series of obstacles including the tanking economy, something Mark Jenkins, senior vice president of development for Kite told the Reporter in September 2009, nearly five years after the company purchased the property.

As of April 27, city staff told the Reporter that Kite had received land use approval for some new buildings as well as to remodel other buildings in the plaza, and at that time it was under building, engineering and construction plan review.

According to information on Kite’s website, kiterealty.com, the project is “planned as an 185,000 square foot community shopping center, Four Corner Square will host a big box and junior box tenants, plus new small shops.”

Maple Valley staff told the Reporter in April the only tenant Kite had identified at that point was Johnson’s Home and Garden.

A detailed site plan available on Kite’s website also shows a Walgreens drug store where Johnson’s is currently located as well as several smaller retail sites between the future home of the hardware store and a Grocery Outlet.

Overall, Johnson said, with the redevelopment of Four Corner Square and the addition of Maple Valley Town Center across the street this could be a busy part of the city which means patience may finally pay off.

“We’re thinking that will be a big part of growth, Fred Meyer bringing more customer traffic to the corner,” Johnson said. “It will just be a better area to shop in and we’re hoping to be a big part of that.”