As the school year starts, many changes can be seen all around the building. The biggest one students might see is the construction of the new DECA store in the Warrior Walkway. The new store will be replacing the current one DECA has now, which is next to the Courtyard. According to business instructor Katie Harmon, the new store is being built to make a more authentic retail experience for Marketing students.

“With the new store [Marketing students] are going to be able to apply their visual merchandising skills from Marketing 1 and their management skills that they’ll learn in Marketing 2,” Harmon said.

Along with the retail part of the store, there will be a conference room students can use to meet with businesses, work on ad campaigns, or just to work on marketing projects, as well as an office for managers to gather and take care of various store needs.

Since the store is student run, it makes sense that the store was made by students as well. Last year, then seniors John Neubaum and Lauren Matis designed the store layout as part of an Architecture 2 project, while this year’s managers helped design the appearance of the new store.

With construction having started on Monday, the plan is for the store to be open to the public by the end of October, according to Harmon.