ST. LOUIS — The announcement this week that St. Louis-based furniture retailer Weekends Only Furniture & Mattress will soon go out of business frees up five prime retail sites.
The low-cost furniture chain was founded in 1997 with brick-and-mortar stores that are open only Friday through Sunday by founder Tom Phillips and his brother David. Phillips, 70, is retiring, leading to the decision to close Weekends Only.
The company operates eight total furniture stores, including five in St. Louis, two in Indianapolis and one in Springfield, Missouri.
The five St. Louis sites are in prime real estate in busy shopping areas, with most near shopping malls. The company, which had $74 million in revenue last year, leases an office in Webster Groves and operates a distribution center out of Aviator Business Park in Hazelwood. The leasing broker for Aviator was unavailable for comment Friday.
The five Weekend Only sites in St. Louis are:
- South County, 6303 S. Lindbergh Blvd; 92,000 square feet; Owned by Pace Properties; 9.47 acres appraised at $4.96 million; Last transferred for $3.3 million in 2003.
- West County, 14205 Manchester Road; 110,000 square feet; Owned by Pace.
- St. Peters, 411 Mid Rivers Mall Drive; 45,000 square feet; Ownership unclear.
- Bridgeton, 11333 Blake Drive at the intersection of Lindbergh Boulevard and St. Charles Rock Road; 110,000 square feet; Owned by TSMD Properties LLC - Tom Phillips; 10.43 acres appraised at $4.3 million; Last sold for $3.3 million in 2002.
- Fairview Heights, 51 Commerce Lane; Owned by H&S Investment Group of Edwardsville; 8.8 acres; Last sold for $5.33 million in 2018.
Weekends Only does not own any of its store properties or the office it leases in Webster Groves, though the Phillips family owns the Bridgeton store property, said Pace Properties retail broker Joe Ciapciak. The South County and West County locations are owned by Brentwood-based Pace.
Ciapciak, a broker who specializes in big-box retail, will will look to find a new use for the two Pace-owned Weekends Only stores. While it’s possible he could serve as broker for other sites since he has worked for those landlords in the past, that has not yet been determined, he said.
To facilitate its wind-down, Weekends Only hired Connecticut-based furniture liquidator Planned Furniture Promotions to handle its liquidation sales, which could start as soon as January, officials said.
Until then, Ciapciak and any other potential brokers seeking to fill the spaces vacated by Weekends Only will have to wait. While Ciapciak has started preliminary discussions and the compiling of information about the properties, deals must wait until it’s clearer when Weekends Only will stop operating.
The best possible tenants for the sites would be other big-box retailers that want to immediately fill the built-out spaces, Ciapciak said.
“The market will tell us whether or not those those tenants exist, but we are cautiously optimistic” about filling the space with some type of use, the broker said, especially considering that the Pace-owned sites in South County, along the bustling Lindbergh corridor, and in West County, located in the Manchester Highlands development near Costco, are considered prime retail locations for any potential user.
“They’re all what I consider very regional or super-regional retail locations, and they should be in fairly high demand,” Ciapciak said.
Like the South County and Manchester sites, the Weekends Only buildings not controlled by Pace also sit at busy areas or intersections that see tens of thousands of cars drive by each day, Ciapciak said. The Bridgeton store is at the corner of Lindbergh Boulevard and St. Charles Rock Road, one of the busiest intersections in north St. Louis County. The Fairview Heights store is near the St. Clair Square mall, and St. Peters is near Mid-Rivers Mall.
Among the tenants that Pace will look to pursue for the properties are discount apparel retailers, which Ciapciak said are actively pursuing more locations in St. Louis and have filled vacant big-box space in the past.
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