OAKLAND — The sign on Third Street says a brand new Walgreens store will be coming soon.

According to Robert T. Abramovich of The Terra Group in Brecksville, Ohio, soon means summer 2009.

The Terra Group is the developer for Walgreens. The store will be built by C.E. Gleason Constructors of Royal Oak, Mich., and will become the firm’s 45th Maryland store.

“Walgreens pretty much bought a block downtown,” said Jim Hinebaugh, Garrett County’s director of economic development. “Everything there has been torn down, what we called the custard stand and some apartments and a Laundromat. We are seeing some materials for the new Walgreens at the site, but nothing vertical yet.”

The average size for a typical Walgreens is about 14,500 square feet with a sales floor of about 11,000 square feet, company literature states.

The Oakland store will employ 25 to 30, according to Walgreens spokesman Robert Elfinger. Included in the store will be a grocery, pharmacy and one-hour photo service. There will also be a single drive-through window. Elfinger said store hours have not yet been determined.

“About one out of four stores is open 24/7,” he said.

Walgreens officials say more than 100 pages of research are prepared for every store site that is being considered and that factors such as major intersections, traffic patterns, demographics and the proximity of hospitals are considered.

Elfinger said the aging population of locations such as Oakland is a deciding factor for opening new stores.

“The baby boomers are aging and requiring additional medical prescriptions,” he said. Elfinger would not provide the cost for building the Oakland store.

Although happy about welcoming new construction and new business into the county, Hinebaugh said such a development is a double-edged sword.

“In a lot of ways, it is encouraging to see new development,” Hinebaugh said. “It is a sign that the county’s economy is evolving.”

Hinebaugh said, though, that he is always concerned what impact a new national chain store will have upon local family-owned firms.

“Walgreens will go head to head with CVS across the street, but CVS is national and can absorb the impact. I’m concerned about the family-owned pharmacies that have existed here for a long time,” Hinebaugh said.

Walgreens touts itself as the nation’s largest drug store chain with most recent annual sales of $59 billion. The company operates 6,630 drugstores in 49 states and other locations. The firm said it filled 617 million prescriptions during a recent 12-month stretch.

Major expansion areas for the Deerfield, Ill., company are California and the Northeast, according to Web site data. Currently, there are five Walgreens in West Virginia, 87 in Virginia and 98 in Pennsylvania. The largest number of stores in any one state is 762 in Florida. The

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.