CEDAR RAPIDS — The largest of the Salvation Army’s 10 retail stores in the Iowa and Illinois region opened Thursday in northeast Cedar Rapids.

Capt. Alex Velasquez said the 30,000-square-foot “Family Store” at 5824 Council St. NE also will include a warehouse annex to store merchandise for resale to other smaller Salvation Army retail outlets.

“This is a good location for our customers as well as those who donate merchandise for resale,” Velasquez said. “We employ about 40 people now, but we expect to eventually have about 70 employees.”

Velasquez said the Salvation Army believes it can bring some new life to a building that formerly housed an Eagle supermarket and more recently the Cedar Rapids Science Station as well as providing a needed revenue stream for its rehabilitation center in Davenport.

“We want to extend our residential rehabilitation services to the Cedar Rapids area,” he said. “We teach welding certification and forklift certification, We also have someone who comes down to teach furniture refinishing and large appliance repair.

”Our rehabilitation program is not just for people to live without drugs and alcohol. They also learn work skills and graduate with a job.”

Velasquez said there is a need for the Salvation Army’s residential rehabilitation program in the Cedar Rapids area with the recent rise in heroin and alcohol abuse.

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“We want to offset that,” he said. “It’s a little more difficult for us to extend service to this area.

“We need the warehouse annex to cut down on our logistics costs so the majority of our income can go directly to meet the need.”

Velasquez is administrator of a 6,200-square-mile territory for the Salvation Army with headquarters in Davenport. He said the parking lot at the Council Street store is two and a half times larger than the parking lot of the organization’s next-largest store.

“We ran out of shopping carts within about five minutes after the store opened at 9 o’clock this morning,” Velasquez said. “We had a tremendous turnout for our grand opening.”

The new Salvation Army store is located across Blairs Ferry Road NE from Goodwill of the Heartland offices and a retail store. Salvation Army also operates retail stores at 717 Third Ave. SE in Cedar Rapids and 2504 Seventh Ave. in Marion.