The Business Spotlight is a cooperative effort of the Glenwood Area Chamber of Commerce and The Opinion-Tribune

True Value Marking 50th year on the Town Square

By Joe Foreman, Editor, Opinion-Tribune

True Value hardware store is marking its 50th anniversary on the west side of the Glenwood Town Square in 2010.

The Trask family opened their Coast To Coast hardware store at 20 N. Walnut St. in March 1960. A half-century later, customers can still count on the store as a place to buy tools, appliances, paint, yardcare products, snow shovels and a wide assortment of other household items.

Hugh Trask, born in Iowa but raised in Wisconsin, came to Glenwood in 1960 with his late wife, Dottie. At the time, they had their choice of opening a Coast to Coast store in Glenwood, Iowa, or Glenwood, Minn. They chose Iowa after talking to other merchants on the square. They came to Glenwood with the understanding that the city had a population of about 5,000. What they didn’t know, however, was that almost half of the city’s population consisted of residents who were being cared for at the Glenwood State Hospital-School.

Despite their smaller-than-anticipated customer base, the store was an instant hit and has flourished over the past 50 years. The store was actually expanded twice, once in the early 1970s and again in 1982.

After getting a business degree and retail experience managing a Gibson’s discount store, Jeff Trask joined his parents at Coast to Coast in 1976. He assumed management of the store in 1987 upon his parents’ retirement.

The Coast to Coast store became True Value Hardware in 2000.

Jeff Trask continues to run operations at True Value, offering the same customer service and a similar line of products that made the store popular with Glenwood-area residents when the doors to the business first opened in 1960.

Jeff Trask said the store will formally mark its 50th anniversary later this year.

True Value is open seven days a week.