The new West Boca Hobby Lobby store will open “mid-Fall” according to company spokesman Vincent Parker. We think that means October or November. The store is replacing Beall’s in West Boca Square.
Mr. Parker did not answer our other questions but he did send us standard responses to common questions. Hiring will begin roughly a month before the store opens. The store manager and co-manager will come from other stores, and they expect to hire between 30 and 50 local employees. Pay starts at $9.50/hour for part-timers and $14/hour for full-time employees. They will have in-store classes with teachers who are not employees, with the store manager in charge of making arrangements.
Hobby Lobby describes itself as a leader in the arts and crafts industry, and its biggest competition is probably Michael’s. We have one of those in West Boca, in Somerset Shoppes on the northwest corner of Lyons and Glades.
Dallas News has a good breakdown of the competition. The average Hobby Lobby is 55,000 square feet and this one will be larger at 78,000 square feet. The average Michael’s is 18,000 square feet and our local one is 25,000 square feet. So the new West Boca Hobby Lobby will be three times the size. We spoke to a couple of area housewives who are very happy about this new addition. It’s especially convenient for those who live west of 441.
The company has gotten some media attention recently because its management stresses a religious identity. Currently the Supreme Court is considering a Hobby Lobby case against Obamacare’s birth control mandate. There was also some media heat in the fall about claims Hobby Lobby not carrying Jewish merchandise. They apologized. If they’re opening in West Boca, they must be trying to appeal to Jews.
From what we’re hearing from readers, they’ll be welcome and find a number of eager shoppers.
Category: Business
Walmart and Hobby Lobby Update
It’s definitely going to be a Walmart. We’ve heard a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen with the old Walmart property on the southeast corner of Palmetto and 441. In January we spoke with workers on-site who mostly indicated it would be a Walmart, though one worker said something different.
A few days ago we noticed the sign in the photo above. That makes it pretty clear it’s going to be a Walmart. We went to the site yesterday and took some more pictures. The work continues.
We also noticed a sign for the incoming Hobby Lobby, which will replace the Bealls at the southern end of West Boca Square (near Chili’s).
We’ve reached out to Hobby Lobby to see if we can find out more, and we’ll let you know if we hear anything.
Here are some more pictures from yesterday’s visit to the West Boca Walmart site.
Party City Closed? Renovating?
From a reader:
I just found out last night that Party City on Glades and Boca Rio is closed down. There is a sign that says Party City is coming soon. So I’m assuming that they are renovating it.
Outback Steakhouse Closed in West Boca
We’ve heard two reports from readers that the Outback Steakhouse in Boca Greens Plaza has closed.
We checked the Outback website’s page for the West Boca location and it has disappeared. It still shows up in a Google search, suggesting that it closed recently.
The Outback on SW 18th is still open, halfway between Powerline and Military Trail.
We are surprised. The Boca Greens Outback seemed reasonably busy, though the service was not always great.
From a reader:
West Boca Cell Phone Survey: Results
Verizon and T-Mobile have the best cell phone coverage in West Boca, according to our survey this week. You can also see this by looking at a cellular coverage map for the different providers. Our results are based on a limited amount of responses but we hope it will be helpful to our readers. Detailed results follow.
A total of eighty-seven respondents answered four question, indicating their home zip code, their cell phone carrier, and their rating for voice coverage and cell coverage in their home. Nearly half of the responses were from the 33428 zip code and another 20% from 33498. Coverage options were weak (scored as 1), so-so (2), pretty good (3), very good (4), and excellent (5).
For the whole of West Boca, we received thirty-six responses from AT&T users, twenty-six from Verizon, fourteen Sprint and eight T-Mobile. There were also two responses from MetroPCS and one from Aio.
T-Mobile users gave their service the highest overall rating, with an average of 4.125 for voice coverage and 4.25 for data. This barely edged out Verizon (4.12 and 4.19), but we’re calling it a tie since the survey had three times as many Verizon users. AT&T was reasonably close in third place (3.92 and 3.94) while Sprint trailed farther back (3.14 and 3.07). The two MetroPCS users rated their service as 4 and the Aio user rated that service as a 5.
Looking at specific zip codes, AT&T has the best rated voice coverage (3.77) in 33428, just ahead of Verizon (3.69). The two tied with a 3.85 for data coverage. T-Mobile was third (3.25, 3.5 – 4 responses) and Sprint was fourth (3, 2.875, 8 responses).
In zip code 33498, Verizon was the clear winner (4.625, 4.75, 8 responses) over AT&T (3.91, 3.73, 11 responses). T-Mobile and Sprint had only one response each in 33498 with T-Mobile rated excellent and Sprint rated so-so.
We did not have enough data to rate the carriers in the remaining individual zip codes (33496, 33433 and 33434). Together in those three zips T-Mobile had the best coverage, but that was with only three users. Verizon (5 users) had slightly better voice coverage than AT&T (12 users) while AT&T had slightly better data coverage.
Comparing zip codes, 33496 appears to have the best overall coverage (4.5, 4.4) and 33428 has the worst. The best combination of zip codes and carriers appears to be Verizon in zip code 33498.
Of course this survey was unscientific and vulnerable to potential manipulation. We removed one response that was submitted right after an identical response from the same IP address.