Rug and furniture store opening in old Kannapolis Target

Asheville-based Rug & Home is fond of interstate highways. How fond? If you've driven along I-85 or I-4o in recent memory, you've surely seen the retailer's billboards, touting its stores and, naturally, the highway exits - in Asheville and Gaffney, S.C. - at which you can find them. Now, Charlotte residents can expect to see even more roadside ads popping up, because Rug & Home this month is opening its third store, in a former Target in Kannapolis. It's at 3333 Cloverleaf Parkway - in other words, and as signs will surely blare, I-85 exit 58.

Rug & Home Wholesale Outlet, as it'll be called, is set to sell rugs, furniture, accents, artwork and home accessories and decor. At 96,000 square feet, it will be the company's largest store; Target vacated the property when it opened a new SuperTarget at Afton Ridge shopping center, a couple of exits south on I-85, in the fall of 2006.

The store will employ between 45 and 50 part- and full-time workers and is slated to open soon, though a spokeswoman said the date was not yet finalized. A grand opening will take place April 23. 

Rug & Home spent upwards of $500,000 renovating the building, with work that included lighting redesign, the addition of hardwood floors in some areas and painting and restoring the facade, chief operating officer Aanchal Agarwal said in a news release. "We were looking at the Charlotte market for a long time," she said. "Kannapolis' close distance to Charlotte's city center and Greensboro, along with the opportunity it presented us to renovate and occupy the abandoned Target building, proved the perfect fit for us."

The project received three years of incentive grants from the city of Kannapolis, according to the Cabarrus Economic Development Corp. They equal 85 percent of the new taxes generated by the company, projected to be just over $9,000.

Owners Rakesh and Dolly Agarwal, Aanchal's parents, founded Rug & Home in 1994. The other stores draw from about a 100-mile radius, the company said.