Supercenter opening Tuesday

A Wal-Mart Supercenter is set to open Tuesday in Yuba City, company officials said.

Store Manager Paul Kovacs said the store will let shoppers in at 8 a.m., one-half hour after a grand opening ceremony.

After that, the anchor store for the Yuba City Marketplace retail complex will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is located at Tharp Road on the north side of Colusa Avenue.

Many of the Supercenter's 650 employees - more than double the staff of 300 at the soon-to-be-obsolete Wal-Mart store nearby - have been setting up fixtures and stocking the store with merchandise to get it ready for the grand opening.

“A lot of hard work goes into it,” Kovacs said Wednesday.

The store's opening marks the end of years of debate, planning, legal battles and construction that started in 2003 with the announcement that Wal-Mart would seek to build a Supercenter in Yuba City. Construction began in May.

The Supercenter will be the Yuba-Sutter area's second, following the opening of a Supercenter in Linda in November.

Yuba City's 203,000-square-foot Supercenter will carry the same merchandise that is sold at a standard Wal-Mart but will add a 43,000- square-foot grocery store, including a meat department, deli and bakery.

The Yuba City Supercenter will also have a TriCounties Bank branch, a Hair Works salon, a McDonald's restaurant, a tire and lube express center, and a pharmacy.

The existing Wal-Mart on Colusa Avenue will close Monday at 6 p.m. It opened in 1992.

Appeal-Democrat reporter John Dickey can be reached at 749-4711. You may e-mail him at jdickey@appeal-democrat.com.