Ashley makes home in former Galyan’s stores: Furniture stores to open in Greenwood, Carmel

Two former Galyan’s Trading Co. Inc. stores are set to find a new life in furniture.

Ashley Furniture HomeStores will enter the market by occupying former Galyan’s stores in Greenwood and in Village Park Plaza in Carmel. The Greenwood store will have about 80,000 square feet and the Carmel store will be slightly smaller at 66,000 square feet, according to plans filed with the state.

The HomeStores sell furnishings made by Arcadia, Wis.-based Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., but are independently owned and operated as licensees of the furniture maker, according to the companies’ Web sites.

Ashley Furniture HomeStores sells midpriced home and home-office furniture. Ashley is the country’s third-largest furniture manufacturer, with $1.5 billion in sales. In addition to its HomeStores, Ashley furniture is sold in several local furniture stores.

The company has been growing aggressively in recent years, often favoring empty big-box stores over new construction. There are about 150 Ashley Furniture HomeStores in the United States and Canada, including stores in Terre Haute and Lafayette.

A company from Louisville, Roth Development, is listed as the owner’s contact on state building permits filed for the new stores here. Roth executive Steve Cullen referred calls to an Ashley representative in Jeffersontown, Ky. Neither he nor representatives from Ashley’s headquarters in Wisconsin returned calls seeking comment.

Ashley is subleasing both sites from Dick’s Sporting Goods, which acquired Galyan’s last year, said Jeffrey R. Hennion, senior vice president of strategic planning at Dick’s.

Ashley’s arrival at the stores wraps up the fate of two of the three sportinggoods stores that will close as a result of Galyan’s’ acquisition by Pittsburgh-based Dick’s Sporting Goods last year. The Galyan’s stores in Greenwood and Carmel closed before the end of the year.

Dick’s recently announced it will close a Dick’s Sporting Goods store at 82nd Street and Allisonville Road in Castleton in favor of the former Galyan’s store at Castleton Square Mall.

That store will kick off a store-closing sale on Feb. 24, Hennion said. The sale will last for a coule of months before the store closes, he said. A sublease hasn’t yet been signed for that store.

Before the acquisition, Galyan’s had already planned to close a store on Pike Plaza Road on the northwest side in favor of one being built at Traders Point at 86th Street and Zionsville Road. That store opened in October as Dick’s. Galyan’s’ lease had expired on the Pike Plaza store.

Galyan’s had also already signed a lease for a new store to open later this year at Plainfield’s Metropolis, a lifestyle center that will eventually include 500,000 square feet of retail space. The Dick’s store, now under construction, will join anchors J.C. Penney and Rave movie theater, along with several specialty-retail tenants.

Dick’s expects to clear out of Galyan’s former headquarters in Plainfield in the next month or so, Hennion said. The 100,000-square-foot building, completed for $11 million in 2003, is owned by locally based Premier Properties, also the developer of Metropolis. Another tenant hasn’t been signed for the office space.