Rona store near Lauzon Parkway in Windsor closing this October

The Rona location at 7350 Catherine St is expected to close in October in Windsor, Ont., on Thursday, June 27, 2013. (Michelle Maluske / CTV Windsor)

Rona is closing 11 stores by the end of 2013, including one in Windsor.

The location at 7350 Catherine St, near Lauzon Parkway and Tecumseh Road, will be shut down in October.

It will impact 95 employees, two-thirds of them are part-time. Paul Sharpe, vice president of retail for Ontario Rona stores, says some of the Windsor workers have been offered the opportunity to relocate to other locations.

“Windsor’s a bit of a tough market because we don’t have a lot of stores down in that part of Ontario,” says Sharpe. “We did include a survey for employees to identify to see if there were markets they were interested in relocating to.”

He confirmed the Leamington Rona will remain open.

Sharpe says the Windsor store was among eight money-losing locations in Ontario.

“These have been unprofitable stores,” says Sharpe. “Originally we had a plan to redeploy some of these stores and or resize these locations, but in terms of securing new sites it turned out to be more of a challenging strategy than we had anticipated.”

The new measures are expected to generate annualized cost-savings of $70 million, in addition to the $40 million announced in February 2013.

Rona president and CEO, Robert Sawyer says it is part of new restructuring and reorganization measures to ramp up the recovery and improve profitability.

“With the measures announced today, Rona will become more agile and efficient, with a simplified business structure and an even stronger balance sheet,” says Sawyer.

The cost-saving plan includes closing three non-profitable stores in British Columbia. There will also be a reduction in administrative, marketing, merchandising and distribution expenses. About 125 jobs will be cut in the four administrative centres in Canada, which was announced to employees last week.

“In some sites we bought ahead of the market,” says Sharpe. “Having more of the smaller-format stores that are more conveniently located in the markets that they serve is a more rational strategy for us to pursue in the future.”