MARANA, ARIZONA – America Furniture Warehouse (AFW) plans to open its first Tucson-area store next year. The company has purchased 19.24 acres of land northwest of the city in Marana for $8,085,400 ($9.65 PSF).
Located at Twin Peaks and I-10, near Tucson Premium Outlets. The seller was an affiliate of Vintage Partners, developers of the Tucson Premium Outlets. The sale closed on May 12, 2022.
Plans are for what is likely to be a 250,000-square-foot warehouse / showroom, though it’s still working up the exact size. That would be equivalent in size to four football fields. This will be small in comparison to the company’s Phoenix megastores.
The AFW store in Glendale is 534,000 square feet and the one in Gilbert 630,000 square feet, almost 11 football fields. A typical AFW store is about 550,000 square feet.
Jake Jabs, CEO of the Englewood, Colo.-based company, reported that six more stores will follow over the next two years — two more in greater Houston, three in Arizona, including this first Tucson-area location, and a second Colorado Springs, Colorado store. When completed, AFW’s store count will jump to 21 in three states by 2023.
It’s all coming after one of the nation’s largest furniture store retailers topped the $1 billion sales mark for the first time last year and despite concerns that the nation could move into a recession soon. But Jabs, who has been through his share of recessions, said he believes demand will remain strong for AFW’s format and way of doing business and that the beefed up market share expected to come with the growth — particularly in Phoenix and Houston — will make the retailer that much stronger and resilient.
In the Phoenix market, where the retailer operates two-area stores, a third is expected to open this summer. This one in a former Costco building in Phoenix proper that AFW has taken over and renovated.
“The secret to free enterprise is finding demand, then filling that demand, and there is actually demand for stores like ours,” Jabs said. “That’s the reason we went to Arizona and are doing over $150 million at each store.”
Being at the mercy of the supply chain, AFW is hoping to finish this next expansion phase by year-end 2023.
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PHOTO: Rendering of latest store in Colorado