Another furniture store for Grand Forks
You probably remember when I broke the story a while back about the new Ashley Furniture/Furniture Outlets USA store coming to Grand Forks. Now it looks like another national furniture store chain has plans for a Grand Forks location.
A chain called Furniture Row is planning a new store directly south of Lowe's. The new store will be just off of I-29. The company hopes to start construction yet this fall. The previously mentioned furniture store also intends to start their building this fall and open next spring. It looks like that by sometime next year, Grand Forks residents should have plenty of new options when it comes to buying furniture.
Furniture Row locations group together several specialty home and furniture store formats into one unified shopping center. Potential store formats in Furniture Row centers include Sofa Mart, Oak Express, Bedroom Expressions, and Denver Mattress. Some location include all four formats while others just include one or two of the formats. The chain operates a location in Rapid City that only includes a Denver Mattress store. It's still unclear exactly what kind of a complex they're planning for Grand Forks. However, it appears that most new locations include all four store formats so I'm thinking that this is the type of complex we'll be getting.
At Monday's city council meeting, the Furniture Row development was granted an exception to the city code pertaining to signs. The chain wants to build a monument style sign 25 feet high while code would otherwise only allow a sign 8 feet high. Since this store will be south of the Grand Forks Marketplace, I'm assuming that the new sign will be near the Marketplace's large sign. I'm personally not that fond of having exceptionally large signs in the city limits, but since this sign will be adjacent to the interstate and not a city street I don't think this is anything to get too upset over.
I'm very excited to see more retail growth coming to the city's south side. It seems like we're hearing about new stores and restaurants all of the time. More choices within the city should keep Grand Forks residents shopping here and should bring in shoppers from throughout the region. This is especially true when it comes to furniture stores. As it is, Fargo currently has more choices when it comes to shopping for furniture and some Grand Forks residents make the trip south when they're looking for new furniture. Two major furniture stores coming to Grand Forks should help stop this trend.
BTW, check out JGS's post about the new Furniture Row store.
Update - 9/19/2006 - 10:18 AM
Furniture Row is also planning a new location in Bismarck. That store was first announed back in May, but at that time a spokewoman for the company said "construction wouldn't likely begin until the first quarter of 2007". So if the Bismarck store was announced back in May but construction won't start until early next year, I'm doubting we'll see much work on the Grand Forks location before early 2007 either.
The Bismarck store will carry all four specialty store formats and will be 54,000 square feet.
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Hopefully the Grand Forks store will include all four formats. Although it stinks that Bismarck is getting one, but at least (so far) Fargo is not.
I wonder if HOM Furniture would consider a GF store. Like I said in my post, GF has really been lacking in the furniture sector as of late and I think we've been losing plenty of business to Fargo. Hopefully, the coming of Ashley Furniture and Furniture Row will stop that bleeding.
Does anyone understand how exactly the Furniture Row development is going to be set up? We hear it's going to be "behind Lowe's". What direction will it face and what road will you use to access the development? I don't quite understand how this will all be situated. It sounds a bit like the Furniture Row building will be "cleverly hidden". I guess that's why they wanted to have that big sign on the Interstate.
i have mentioned this before but has anybody heard anything about the old target building... i noticed that there is no longer a "for sale" sign on the front... and they have added a door in the middle of the big "grand forks ad" on the inside of the mall... anybody have any in at the mall or know whats going on there?
Any new stores are always welcome. Especially new furniture stores. Lets hope they have soem really good stuff.
You're probably right, JGS. BTW, has anybody been south of town on the interstate in the last couple of days? I heard that it looks like there is already some groundwork going on in the Furniture Row area...is that even possible?!?
I wonder if this development might include more than just Furniture Row. The distance from 38th Street all the way west to the Interstate is a good distance...about a guarter of a mile. I'm guessing Furniture Row will go up by the Interstate, but will face east and be visible from 38th Street and then there will be smaller stores and restaurants between 38th and Furniture Row. Can't wait to see!
The development should contain more than just furniture row - the site plan submitted to planning and zoning was bigger -
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