A Visit To The New Melrose Park Menards

Over the weekend, I packed the kids into the van and headed out to visit the brand new Menards in Melrose Park.  Exciting stuff in our house.  Seriously.  A new Menards?  That's like 10 minutes closer to our house?  Sweet.

I've been driving by this location for the past 6 months waiting for it to open and thought that it looked 'small'. Turns out...the footprint of the store *is* small.  That's because it is a two story store.

From the Chicago Tribune:

With the opening of this new 2-story store, the Melrose Park area will now enjoyall of the great services, low prices and shopping convenience that Menards offers.Jeff Abbott, Menards Spokesperson says, "We appreciate all the loyalshoppers who shopped at our former Melrose Park store for many, many years.We can't wait to open the doors to this impressive, new 2-story store so everyonecan see for themselves all the latest, greatest home improvement products wehave to offer."

I've been in a few two story Menards.  They're usually ratty and old and have a weird staircase that takes you up there.  In fact, the old Melrose Park store was two-story.  But because of the cart situation, I almost never went up there.

But...guess what, guys?  This Menards figured that out.  And they figured it out in a BIG way.

They have a cart escalator.  Yeah!  A ramp that you ride up WITH your cart.  Kinda like how IKEA does it.  But way better.

Here's what it looks like:

One of the awesome parts of this whole thing is that the carts and the escalator are magnetized.  That's right.  Once you roll your cart on the ramp, it *locks* into place.  Can't push it.  Can't let it slide backwards.  It is like magic.

And you want a classy shopping experience?  Move over Mariano's.  Looks like the fine folks up in Wisconsin are taking a page from Bob Mariano's playbook:  they have a piano player tickling the ivories up on the second floor.  She's set up right at the top of the cart excalators and the sound of the music carries really well in the big place.

The store is set up a bit different than most Menards.  They have the paint section up front and I couldn't quite put my finger on where the typical 'season' selections will be.  But, this will NOW become our go-to Menards.  Halloween can't come soon enough!