Half-Moon Expands in Ga.

Half-Moon Outfitters announced plans to open a new store later this year in Augusta, Ga. and relocate its existing store in Athens, Ga. to a new location by next summer. The new store will bring Half-Moon Outfitters’ store count to nine, including four in Georgia and five in South Carolina.

The Augusta store will be 7,500 square feet and include an outdoor courtyard and exterior climbing wall deisgned for all ages and skill levels. The store will be a co-tenant with Whole Foods in the newly redeveloped Washington Crossing Shopping Center on the corner of I-20 and Washington Road. Like all other recent Half-Moon Outfitters stores, it will incorporate comprehensive green building techniques including daylight harvesting, sustainably and regionally harvested materials, VOC free paints and finishes, and state of the art lighting and HVAC.

In Athens, Half-Moon is moving its store to a larger, more central location, says the company.

“The success of our Athens store has encouraged us to move to a bigger spot where we can showcase paddle sports really well and all on one floor unlike our current space,” said Half-Moon Owner Beezer Molten.

The new Athens location is will be opened in a 11,000-square-foot former dry cleaners at 394 Prince Avenue that will be remediated and cleaned as deemed necessary by the Georgia Envrionmental Protection Division according to the Georgia Brownfields program.

“It is the goal of Half-Moon Outfitters to take the property from a community liability to a state of the art retail facility, again highlighting the principles of sustainable construction that the company learned during the renovation of their LEED Platinum Distribution Center in 2006,” said Molton.

Between the two moves, Half-Moon Outfitters will be adding more than 10,000 square feet of retail floor space to their overall Georgia footprint in buildings that are redeveloped, in-fill locations. Augusta will open Fall 2014, and Athens will move early summer 2015.

“We intend to grow but only in places where our addition is a gift to the community and where the new store can sustainably and artfully be added to our mix,” said Molten. “We will never cookie cut and are determined to make each store an expression of the natural and social environment in which they are built.”