MOSES LAKE — The dirt flew on Thursday as ground was formally broken for the Ulta Beauty store coming to Moses Lake.

Of course, crews from Spokane-based Baker Construction have already been at work on the site on North Stratford Road in the same shopping center as WinCo Foods and Sportsman’s Warehouse for several weeks now, as rebar poles and wooden boards were already in place and ready to hold a concrete foundation just waiting to be poured.

But today, everyone who mattered in this project gathered to celebrate what this 10,500 square foot retail store means for Moses Lake.

“This development shows how deeply we care about our community and our commitment to expand economic and social opportunities,” said Rudy Deleon, who, along with his wife Anastasiya, owns this nearly one-acre lot.

Ulta is a high-end cosmetics retailer in the United States and has over 1,100 stores nationwide. The opening of the Moses Lake outlet is part of a major expansion effort in which the Bolingbrook, Ill.-based cosmetics retailer hopes to open 100 new stores in 2018.

While no one from Ulta was present at the groundbreaking, real estate broker Jim Quigley, with the Spokane-based brokerage firm Kiemle Hagood, said Ulta is very committed to succeeding in the Moses Lake market.

“Ulta is very excited about being located here,” Quigley said. “This will be a great store for them, and they are very excited for the opportunity to be in Moses Lake.”

Zach Bull, a project manager with Baker Construction overseeing the building project, said his firm is simply building the outside shell of the building. That should take about six months, he said.

Ulta will be leasing the retail space, Bull added, and it could take as much as three more months of inside construction work before the outlet is ready to open.

Which means the city’s newest retailer may not open until June 2019.

However, both Quigley and Deleon noted, it took two long years of careful negotiations — a lot of work by brokers and lawyers — to get to the point where construction workers are now building.

“We did it!” Deleon said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.