Jo-Ann Fabric & Craft to open at Lindale in August

A new Jo-Ann Fabric & Craft store is slated to open in late August at Lindale Mall replacing a smaller Jo-Ann location at Town & Country Shopping Center.

Jo Ann will move into the former Planet X location just west of the mall. Planet X relocated earlier this month to the former Theatre Cedar Rapids building on the Lindale Mall plaza near First Avenue.

The new Jo-Ann in Cedar Rapids is scheduled to soft open in late August and hold its a grand opening in early September.

Jo-Ann is the nation's largest specialty retailer of fabrics and one of the largest specialty retailers of crafts. It operated 751 stores in 48 stores at the end of January. They included 235 large-format stores like the one slated to open at Lindale, and 516 small-format stores.

The large format stores average 36,000 square feet in size and generated net average sales of $4.8 million per store in fiscal 2011.

Merchandise categories include crafting, floral, finished home-decor items and seasonal accessories, as well as an expanded selection of fabrics for apparel, crafting and home decorating.

The store will offer classes to teach a variety of sewing and crafting techniques at all skill levels, according to Joe Adams, a company spokesman.

New Jo-Ann stores typically employ 25 to 35 part-time employees in addition to a full-time management staff of five.

Jo-Ann plans to hold a job fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 18 at the Iowa Workforce Development office on the lower level of Lindale Mall.