New White Jones Owners Have Big Plans for 2025

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

You may have noticed Anderson’s three White Jones Hardware locations have a new name. But did you know one of those locations is reported to be moving to a new home in 2025?

Elder’s Ace Hardware, which operates 26 locations in three states (Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Run by The Helpful Group, Elder is a cooperative of 26 Elder's Ace Hardware store owners/operators. Tom Glenn, the Group's president and CEO for the past three decades. His father, Elder Glenn, and three partners opened Chattanooga's first Ace store on Highway 58 in 1969.

White, who died in 2003, and Gertie, who died in 2012, Jones opened the first store in Anderson in 1967 in the Watson Village Shopping Center next to the U.S. Post Office. They moved to the larger location in that shopping center when Grant’s closed in 1978. They opened the Pruitt Shopping Center in 1990 and the S.C. 24 store in 2006.

In 2006 a fourth site was considered for S.C. 81, but never built. Elder is planning to move the Pruitt Shopping Center location to a site on S.C. 81 in 2025, and the current store is already listed on their website as “Elder’s Ace Hardware of Highway 81.”

The new S.C. 81 site is expected to be larger than the current 16,500-foot facility in Pruitt Shopping Center.