by Keilani Best
Florida Today
July 1, 2009
Sam's Club has a new location in Cocoa, and it's green.
Not literally, of course, but in its building construction.
The new 136,000-square-foot Sam's Club on the corner of State Road 520 and Interstate 95 opens Thursday and has environmentally friendly features throughout. It is the second Sam's Club in the county, in addition to a West Melbourne location.
And like that one, and other warehouse clubs in Brevard such as BJ's Wholesale Club, this one features bulk-size grocery items as well as additional services, including a pharmacy, a digital photo center, a wine shop, electronics and a tire and battery installation service. Shoppers must purchase annual memberships.
It's what surrounds shoppers, not what they're putting in their carts, that helps distinguish this location, officials say.
About 180 skylights line the ceilings, helping keep electrical lighting to a minimum. The lights that are on the ceiling adjust to the skylights.
LED lights, which use less energy than traditional bulbs, line the freezer section of the store, and when there is no movement, the lights are dimmed. There are also poured concrete floors, a feature in every Sam's Club warehouse store, but one that helps keep temperatures regulated.
And there's a rain capture system that uses rainwater for landscape irrigation and the building's cooling system.
Seems simple enough, but Terry Street, club manager, said the lighting and skylights will equate to a 75 percent savings on the store's power bill.
"My favorites are the skylights," Street said. "The concrete floor takes less water and less time to dry, so it's not water consuming."
The store also features a Home Efficiency Center, which focuses on merchandise customers can use to decrease their home and business energy use, such as LED light fixtures and Energy Star appliances.
Street said that hiring for the store is complete, and it will add about 220 jobs to the area.
Store associates have been in place for about three months already, and on Tuesday they were busy preparing the store for its "soft opening" Evening Preview tonight.
Local businesses with 100 or more employees can join the store's "partner membership" program, which saves its employees about $10 on membership.
The store has also brought with it $28,000 in grants to local businesses and programs, most notably, $10,000 in grants to the Cocoa police and fire departments, $8,000 to Project Hunger and $10,000 to Clearlake Middle School.
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