BETHEL — Bethel’s Napa Auto Parts store at 10 Mechanic St. will be moving to a larger building on Mayville Road.

Chris Boles, whose family owns the business and 28 other Maine Napa stores said, while they hoped it would happen sooner, the new store will likely not open until June.

According to town records the current Mechanic Street building is 3,840 square feet and the new space is 7,000 square feet.

Boles said the new building will have it’s own employee break room and separate manager’s office, unlike the current combined set-up. There will be two bathrooms. The seven employees currently have only one. There will be a second level storage area and a dedicated weather head/hydraulic room.

Boles said the employees on Mechanic Street have to go outside to get products from cold storage units behind the store because of the space crunch inside. “[At the new location] everything will be under one roof,” said Boles.

He said about 5,000 of the 6,000 U.S. Napa stores are “Mom and Pops,” or independently-owned stores, including the Bethel store. Boles said his father bought his first Napa in 1981 in Ellsworth Maine. They currently own 29 stores, all in Maine.

Along with his parents, Boles and his three siblings now own the business called Coastal Auto Parts. “It’s a franchise without the contract … we don’t have the strict guidelines of a franchise,” he said.

The majority of their customers are retail: garages, contractors and fleets. He said Bethel’s new location will be retail only, not a distribution center. Their new 46,000-square-foot Bangor store is a distribution center and will service Bethel.

Gem Theater owner Wade Cavanaugh owns the building at 10 Mechanic Street. He said he couldn’t divulge his plans for the space until after he went before the Bethel Planning Board. To date, he is not on the planning board schedule.

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