Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Hobby Lobby and Big Lots

As we continue to work on store locations for Bob’s Discount Furniture we continually learn about other big box retailers coming to Columbia. Today we learned that Hobby Lobby has leased the former Filenes Basement store in Snowden Square in Columbia. The arts and crafts retailer based out of Oklahoma City, has grown from a 300 square foot store in 1972 to 450 stores in 38 states. The former Filenes Basement store is 46,000 square feet.

Over the Columbia Crossing, the long vacant Comp USA store will soon be vacant no longer. Big Lots, “nation's largest broadline closeout retailer” has signed a lease for the 28,000 square foot store next to Joann Fabrics. Big Lots is a big operation with 1,400 stores in 47 states and over $4 billion in annual revenue. Their stores carry a wide variety of stuff.

Coupled with the recent announcements of store opening by Babies R Us and REI the long dry spell in retail, where there were more closings than openings, appears to have finally ended
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