Following last month’s announcement that the Leeton and Narrandera Salvation Army family stores would be closing, a new store has risen from the ashes.

The Leeton Community Op-Shop will take the family store’s place.

The Leeton Chamber of Commerce president Graham Heffer said this was a win for Leeton.

“It's run by a community based organisation, so forever and a day the community will own this,” he said.

“We're in control of its destiny and no longer do we have the fear of an outside organisation saying 'It's not working, we're pulling out’.”

The store will operate out of the old Salvation Army building and has acquired the stock from the old store.

The newly formed Leeton Community Care Development Corporation of which the new op-shop was formed under was still in negotiations about the shop fittings and the truck.

They put the call to Leeton residents to help with storage sheds for stock in the time being.

Mr Heffer said based on the financials they’ve seen, the store should be viable.

“On a yearly basis we know that our running costs, including wages, utilities and rent will probably run at around $150,000-$160,000 a year,” he said.

“We know based on figures we were receiving that they (Salvation Army) were turning over a bit of over $210,000.

“So there will be about $40,000-$50,000 a year that we can put back into support services within the town.”

He was slightly concerned about the initial opening period, which was estimated to be the second week of May.

“A concern I have is since it's going through a close down, by the time we re-open it would've been closed for six weeks,” he said.

“If we can keep the momentum up, by the second week of it being open, we'll be back to those normal trading figures.

“We know there are certain members of our community that are op-shopaholics and they're probably going through slight withdrawals at the moment so don't doubt that they'll hit the shop pretty hard.”