Feb. 14, 2020

A home-improvement store in Hartford is getting bigger to meet the growing community’s demand.

The Hartford Building Center is adding 2,400 square feet, which will more than double the retail and showroom space inside its lumber yard and hardware store.

Lisa Hellvig is the owner and president and her son Travis is the operations manager. She took over leadership of the business in 2014 after her husband, Joseph, had a health setback.

Travis’s wife, Erika Hellvig, also works at the building center, and Lisa’s 15-year-old son, Jacob, helps out part time.

The Hellvigs acquired the struggling store in 2008 and have succeeded in increasing sales, especially in recent years, Lisa and Travis said.

“We knew from the beginning that if we wanted it to be a destination building center, we needed a better showroom,” Travis said in a statement.

Construction to create the space is underway. The 12th anniversary of the store under the leadership of a Hellvig will be in June. Lisa hopes to hold a grand reopening then.

It’s the latest of several investments in the growing community northwest of Sioux Falls.

There are five active housing developments in the town of more than 2,500 residents. About 600 new lots are planned, and 100 of them are ready to go, according to the Hartford Area Development Foundation.

“We’re set to see the biggest growth that Harford has ever seen,” Lisa Hellvig said.

The South Dakota Small Business Development Center in Sioux Falls has assisted the Hellvigs from the beginning with financial projections and other services to help the family acquire the business and, later on, to acquire capital for more inventory.

Mark Slade, regional director of the SBDC office in Sioux Falls, has worked with the Hellvigs, on and off, for several years. The Hartford Building Center is a typical, Main Street-like, community-based, cornerstone business that is important to the town’s commercial well-being, he said.

The store’s financial needs have been typical of the needs of small businesses in the Sioux Falls area too. “This is a pretty common situation,” he said. “About a quarter of what’s been coming through our doors in recent years has been related to changes of ownership.”

Through the years, Dakota Business Finance has helped the building center with two loans, including the recent addition.

“It’s a really nice to have a small hardware store and lumber yard in your community and not have to drive back and forth to Sioux Falls,” executive director Lynne Keller Forbes said.