Customers of the Ace Hardware store who groaned over its closure in September will be happy to know it is returning sometime in February.

Rob Nelson closed the store last summer, citing flagging sales, a shift in consumer buying habits, the influence of Amazon, and competition from Tractor Supply and the Walmart Supercenter.

However, Mark Yamayoshi, who owns ACE Hardware stores in Newman Patterson, is taking a gamble that he can open a store in the same building and run it as profitable.

“We think we can make it,” he said last week. “Ceres is a good place and a lot of traffic and they need a hardware store.”

Yamayoshi suggested it will come down to how well customers are treated and the availability of products they wish to buy.

“I don’t want a customer coming in, ‘oh you don’t have that, and you don’t have that’ and that’s what we should really carry.”

He plans to increase the stock that was available in the former store.

“We probably will end up with more in barbecue and garden stuff.”

Yamayoshi said he was contacted by Nelson when the store closed but at the time he wasn’t interested. He was encouraged by the fact that the Pallios family that owns the Richland Shopping Center wanted to see the building remain as a hardware store.