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Pleasants Hardware will keep name under new Virginia Beach-based owners

Posted at 5:25 PM, Jan 12, 2016
and last updated 2016-01-12 17:25:53-05

RICHMOND, Va. -- A Virginia Beach-based company announced plans to buy Pleasants Hardware and its seven Richmond-area stores.

Taylor's "Do-It" Centers made the announcement at a joint event Tuesday morning with Pleasants.

The deal is effective starting February 17.

Taylor's president said the seven local stores will continue to carry the Pleasants name.

Pleasants Hardware has been a staple in the Richmond-area for the past 100 years and recently announced plans to close the flagship store on West Broad Street. Sometime in the spring, the midtown Pleasants is scheduled to come down to make way for a new Whole Foods grocery, an official said.

The C.F. Sauer Company purchased Pleasants in 1989. They own the whole block-plus, including an old state building and what was once the largest shoe factory in the United States before the Civil War.

When they bought Pleasants, "We weren't going into the hardware business," Mark Sauer said. "It was a real estate deal."

The real estate deal planted in 1989 by C.F. Sauer III has now ripened. The plan is for Whole Foods to be the "centerpiece" of this long block that will become Sauer's Center, Mark Sauer said.

While roughly 100 employees working at the midtown Pleasants will lose their jobs, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported, severance packages based on tenure will be given, the paper said.

But the name will now live on, and likely employees stay in place, at the other seven stores.

“We are very excited about today’s announcement, especially because it keeps the Pleasants Hardware that the people of Richmond know and love local and independent,” said Joe Taylor, President of Taylor’s Do-It Centers.

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