Feb. 1, 2024

The former Bed Bath & Beyond at Empire East is becoming a new location for an Ashley furniture store.

It will be the third one in Sioux Falls for Furniture Mart USA, which first opened an Ashley store at Dawley Farm Village and added one at its north-side corporate headquarters in late 2022.

Companywide, it’s the 36th Ashley store, with No. 37 in progress in Maple Grove, Minnesota, also in a former Bed Bath & Beyond store.

Backfilling former big-box stores has been a strategy of Furniture Mart founder Bill Hinks for “a long time,” said Mark Millage, director of community relations. “Sometimes if you’re going to build new, you have to build out on the fringes. And there’s an opportunity to go into the heart of a community when opportunities like Bed Bath & Beyond open up.”

The company’s store portfolio is filled with locations in spaces that used to be a Kmart, Younkers, Herberger’s or Shopko, he added.

“And Bill is looking at other potential locations in the Twin Cities,” Millage said. “We know we need to grow more there, and Bed Bath & Beyond has more opportunities.”

At 40,000 square feet, the Empire East store at 3800 S. Louise Ave. will be comparable to the store at Dawley Farm. The store at the headquarters, 140 E. Hinks Lane, is bigger and was part of a broader expansion.

Many customers are pulling up to that store with trailers or trucks because “they know they can go down to the end of the building and pick it up because we stock such high volume in the warehouse,” Millage said. “The folks in Sioux Falls are finding it, but I’ve seen anecdotally a lot of out-of-town license plates too.”

For the newest store, Hinks liked “the location in that mall corridor” and the opportunity to reach west-side shoppers who typically shop closer to home, Millage said.

The plan is to open at Empire East this spring.

It’s also a homecoming of sorts for Hinks, who had a store called New Town Furniture there in the 1980s when the property opened as New Town Mall.

The Bed Bath & Beyond space drew considerable interest from retailers, said Raquel Blount, vice president of commercial real estate for Lloyd Cos., who brokered the space.

For Ashley, “I just think it’s strategic positioning across from Empire Mall, and the Louise Avenue address is prominent,” she said. “There’s just been a lot of development in and around the mall with Dillard’s and potentially what’s coming with Sears and Empire Place, and it’s rare. We have so much interest in that core strike zone. A lot of people come to town and just travel in that area … so it’s nice to have that presence.”