Best Buy Co. Inc., a Minneapolis-based electronics retailer with 312 stores nationwide, is interested in opening stores here eventually, a spokesperson for that company says.


When it would land here, however, still hasnt been determined.


We are interested in that area, but we have no plans to open stores there at this time, says Laurie Bauer, the companys director of public relations. Spokane is one of several major areas in which Best Buy does not have a presence currently.


Best Buy most likely wont open a store in Spokane during its current fiscal year, which started at the beginning of February 1999. Bauer says the company already has chosen locations for the new stores45 in allthat it hopes to open this fiscal year, and none of them are in the Pacific Northwest.


The Puget Sound Business Journal reported May 7 that Best Buy is evaluating former Future Shop Inc. stores in the Seattle area as potential store sites. Vancouver, British Columbia-based Future Shop, an electronics retailer that has a product mix similar to Best Buys, shut down its 23 U.S. outlets earlier this year, including one at 115 N. Sullivan Road in the Spokane Valley and one at Northpointe Plaza on Spokanes North Side.


Bauer declines to comment on whether Best Buy is looking at the former Future Shop store spaces here. Eric Ommundsen, a project manager in corporate operations at Future Shop, says that the company is talking with retailers of all sorts, but didnt know whether it has been in contact with Best Buy. Ommundsen says Future Shop hasnt reached agreements on the disposal of any of its former sites.


Bauer says Best Buy has an aggressive expansion plan that includes almost doubling the number of stores it operates nationwide over the next five years. Those plans call for opening stores in the Pacific Northwest sooner rather than later, but the exact time has yet to be determined, she says. Currently, the Best Buy stores nearest to Spokane are in the San Francisco Bay area, where Best Buy operates two outlets and plans to open several more this year.


Similar to the former Future Shop stores here, Best Buy sells a variety of consumer electronics goods and appliances, as well as compact discs, videocassettes, and digital video discs.