Granite distributor Pacific Shore Stones chooses Memphis for the 9th warehouse/showroom

Even as builders still onslaught to shun a recession, a construction retailer prepares to open a 35,500-square-foot business in Memphis.

Much credit goes to a postulated recognition of slab countertops, a oppulance that keeps swelling from upscale homes down to middle-class dwellings.

Founded 7 years ago in Los Angeles, Pacific Shore Stones will enhance to Memphis with a grand opening Jun 17.

It will contest with during slightest dual other mill distributors in a Memphis area, Triton Stone in Southaven and Natural Stone and Tile in Arlington.

One of a fabricating stores that buys from a distributors is Tops Unlimited in Collierville.

“We’re substantially busier now than we’ve been in dual years,” handling partner Joe Savage said. “Most of it is renovations. People are remodeling their kitchens.”

Crews during Tops Unlimited have had to work Saturdays a past 3 weeks to stay on schedule.

“People are only upgrading,” Savage said.

Pacific Shore Stones sells granite, marble and other mill slabs for kitchen countertops, bathrooms and other spaces.

Its warehouse/showroom in a Century Center Business Park on Whitten Road during I-40 will be Pacific Shore Stones’ ninth location. The others are in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Calif., Arroyo Grande, Calif., San Antonio, Austin, Little Rock, Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

More people have selected to stay in and urge their houses instead of perplexing to sell in such a clever buyer’s market, pronounced Jeremy Dorsey, a distributor’s plcae manager.

“Kitchen and baths are dual priorities for everybody,” he said.

The priority in selling for Pacific Shore Stones is to get into “secondary cities” that are not already jam-packed with competition. In Texas, for example, “we’re not in Dallas or Houston. There’s a reason for that,” Dorsey said. “We don’t wish to go somewhere where there’s already 20 people to contest with.”

In a foe of home sales, a word “granite” packs a punch when Realtors write a all-important comments for a Multiple Listing Service descriptions of homes for sale, pronounced John Linthicum, broker/manager during Crye-Leike Realtors’ Bartlett office.

“It’s still a large deal,” he said. “… Some might still use Corian. Some others like other stone. But slab is still a prohibited item.”

And many reduction chosen than it was.

It has migrated down from $500,000 houses to homes of $200,000 or even less, Linthicum said, adding, “People are putting it in to try to set their residence detached a small bit.”

New home starts in Shelby County forsaken 32 percent in Apr compared to Apr 2010. The default of activity in a home-building attention is such that Jimmy Moore believes a new mill wholesaler contingency also be counting on remodeling sales.

“Right now, only about many people are carrying to supplement,” pronounced Moore, whose J. Moore Associates builds homes mostly in Lakeland, Arlington and Fayette County. “All of us new home and tradition home builders are now doing remodeling and additions.”

Suppliers such as Pacific Shore Stones and fabricators like Tops Unlimited are counting on a remodeling business, too, he said.

“Any new residence that’s over $225,000 is going to have slab kitchen tops,” he said. “And when people ascent their home, if they had laminate or Formica countertops, afterwards many people wish to ascent to granite.”

Pacific Shore Stones sealed a five-year franchise during Industrial Development International’s Century Center Business Park Building “A.”

Tim Moore, clamp boss of leasing with IDI, represented a landlord.

Steve Boysen and Tucker Beck, both of Crye-Leike Commercial, represented a tenant.

– Tom Bailey Jr.: 529-2388