New Cardinals store opens Wed.

Tony Cardinal is set to change the sports retail landscape in Lubbock as his company, Cardinal's Sports Center, is transitioning from purely a sporting goods store into a 'lifestyle' store -- it's a concept that other sporting goods stores will be watching closely. His new 50,000 square foot digs at the intersection of Slide Road and South Loop 289 is about to break the mold of how sporting goods stores operate.

The newest Cardinal's Sports Center will open Wednesday.

Located in space previous occupied by an Albertson's grocery store, Cardinal's now has more than enough space to incorporate the products shoppers are used to finding in a sporting goods store and much more. The new location will also house a trophy factory, a coffee bar, a workout rooms that will hold a variety of exercise classes to the public and an artificial turf area for athletes to conduct offseason training much like the facilities college athletes use while prepping for a combine.

That's on top of an embroidery and customizable clothing zone with which RRS subscribers should be very familiar -- if you own something with RRS.com on it, it came from Cardinal's.

"We're trying to expand the products that we do carry," Cardinal said. "But we're also trying to make Lubbock a lifestyle town, or help Lubbock become more of a lifestyle town. So we've put in some fitness concepts and we've got a coffee bar, batting cages and a turf area and training for athletes and training for people that have just been on the couch."

Cardinal said shoppers will have a much larger selection of merchandise than ever before

For starters, how about the largest selection of Under Armour apparel and equipment in the nation?

"We were able to get with Under Armour and they provided us the ability to put in what they're telling us is the largest concept shop in the United States," Cardinal said. "They're putting in quite a bit of fixturing and flooring and giving us some rights to certain inventories that we wouldn't have been able to. We're really excited about that part.

"The consolidation, what I thought was, Lubbock has outgrown our other locations so we are going try to put it in a more convenient location. Between Marsha Sharp and the loop, it's pretty easy to get to this building."

Texas Tech fans will arguably get the most benefit out of the spacious concept store.

"We're going to expand our Tech area but we're also putting in Tech pool tables, Tech outdoor furniture, all the different billiards and pool sticks and all that goes with Tech," Cardinal said. "We're just going to go ahead and expand the clothing and expand some of the hard goods that we never had room for."

No corners have been cut, and the result is a concept that is needed in the Lubbock community.

"It's a lot of my employees' ideas and we've taken some ideas from different stores that have done certain things and just meshed a few more ideas than what people have done before into the building," Cardinal said.