KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Nebraska Furniture Mart plans to hire more than 700 workers for its store near the Kansas Speedway, expected to open in the fall.

Nebraska Furniture Mart officials gave an invitation-only open house Tuesday to showcase their 16-acre, 712,000-square-foot store/warehouse facility, which is about 25 miles east of Lawrence in western Wyandotte County.

Jeff Lind, director of operations for the company’s Kansas City operations, said the 450,000-square-foot store and the 262,000-square-foot warehouse attached to it would employ 738 people, ranging from delivery drivers and forklift operators to sales clerks and home theater installers.

Lind said the company would do the bulk of its hiring in June, but will begin accepting applications for some positions during a job fair that begins Monday.

“We’ll have positions all the way from entry-level to upper management positions,” Lind said.

He declined to give a salary range for employees at the store. He said about two-thirds of the positions would be for the retail operations of the store, with the remaining third of the jobs in the company’s warehouse.

Company officials said the store was still on track to open this fall, but he declined to give a specific date. The project began in December 2001, when the company broke ground on the store, which will be the company’s first furniture store outside Omaha, Neb.

Lind said the company, 80 percent of which is owned by Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett, decided to expand into the Kansas City area in large part because the company’s Omaha store already attracts 60,000 customers from Missouri and Kansas each year.

Nebraska Furniture Mart officials expect to begin hiring employees for their 712,000-square-foot western Wyandotte County store next week. Jeff Lind, director of Kansas City operations for the company, Tuesday gave a tour of the building, which for comparison purposes is seven times larger than Lawrence's former Kmart store.

“Our research told us that Kansas City is really a very underserved market in all the categories of merchandise that we sell,” Lind said. “That’s the No. 1 reason we’re here. If we thought the market was pretty well-served we wouldn’t be here.”

The company has its hand in much more than just the furniture market. The store is expected to stock 160,000 different items, including appliances, electronics and flooring in addition to a full line of furniture.

Lind said the store was expected to draw customers within a 250-mile radius of the Speedway, which means it will target Lawrence shoppers.

Lawrence business owners seem to be taking the competition in stride.

“At the beginning it will affect everybody just because it is new and folks will want to see it,” Wayne Martin, owner of Lawrence’s Kansas Furniture Factory Outlet, said. “But in the long run, I don’t think it will be that big of a deal.

“I think we’ll be fine just because of how smaller businesses are able to take care of their customers. Nebraska Furniture Mart is so big that when you have a problem, who do you go to to really get it taken care of?”