Smulekoff’s Home Store prepares for its final days

CEDAR RAPIDS - This Friday, Smulekoff's Home Store will open its doors for the last time. The furniture store, which has been part of the downtown fabric for 125 years, will close.

For months, big yellow and red signs advertising its final days have hung on windows and doors.

Furniture has been marked down, and then marked down again as the store has sold off its inventory - moving from five floors of furniture down to one and a half by the middle of November.

'Every time I empty a room, employees get sad,” said Allan Barbeln, president of Innovative Advertising Inc., a furniture store consulting company. Barbeln, a friend of the family, is helping close the store and sell the merchandise.

It's hard for employees and residents, he said, because the reality of closing is finally here.

'The ones that have been here the longest, this is their life,” Barbeln said, pointing out that a handful of employees have been with Smulekoff's for more than 15 years.

One staff member has even worked for the family for 60 years.

Smulekoff's announced in August that it would close. The city of Cedar Rapids purchased the furniture store for $4.7 million through its Voluntary Property Acquisition process - federal funds used to buy properties destroyed by the 2008 flood.

About 50 employees will be affected by the closure, and Barbeln is working to find them jobs with other furniture companies that also are his clients.

'We appreciate our generations of loyal customers, our staff and our suppliers who have allowed us to offer quality and value to our customers and to the Cedar Rapids community who have helped us thrive,” said Ann Lipsky, the company's president, in a news release back in August. 'We treasure the role we have been able to play in the growth of this community, through challenges and triumphs.”

Those generations of customers and their memories have amazed Barbeln, who isn't from Cedar Rapids. He said he loves hearing the stories so many customers have shared as they've come in to look at furniture and say their goodbyes.

'I hear something every day,” he said. 'People come in and say, ‘This is so sad, my mom or grandmother bought a couch from here,' or ‘We got ...

registered here'” for wedding gifts, he said.

These family stores really can't be duplicated any more, Barbeln said.

These days, retail stores aren't handed down from family member to family member. Instead they are bought and sold if they're successful - and closed if they aren't.

A long history

Smulekoff's Home Store has been part of downtown Cedar Rapids since 1889 when Henry Smulekoff, a Russian immigrant, opened a store on May's Island.

The store outgrew its space and moved to Third Avenue SW in 1908, relocating again to its current location in 1942.

The store suffered significant flood damage in 2008, which forced the business to operate out of its warehouse for two months before it could return to its downtown location.

'I've worked with more than 200 clients,” Barbeln said. 'In all my time in doing this, I've not seen a store with a stronger credibility with its market than Smulekoff's.”

Barbeln guesses its reputation is one reason the store was able to last as long as it did.

'It just doesn't make sense for an operation this big to be down here,” he said, in an area that is not a retail core. Furniture stores everywhere want to be in the suburbs he added.

Several challenges factored into the store's closing, Smulekoff's employees said.

Lipsky was not available for interview, but Theresa Blair, communication's manager for Smulekoff's, said back in August that timing played a major role.

'In order to participate in the buyout, a decision had to made,” she said.

Lipsky first asked the city to buy the building in 2011, writing a letter stating she had concerns over the Army Corps of Engineers flood protection plans, which call for a flood wall next to the store. This would block its delivery dock, she wrote.

'Despite her efforts, she couldn't find an adequate place to move,” Blair said.

The store was in talks with Frew Development Group, the Dever, Colo.-based company overseeing the $90 million redevelopment of Westdale Mall, and Lipsky considered moving it into the vacant Von Maur building there.

But the two sides could not come to an agreement, John Frew and Barbeln said.

In the end, he said, it was just time for Smulekoff's to close.

'Ann is 72 - her kids are professionals with careers of their own,” he said. 'There was no one to hand it over to.”