The fate of two local flooring supply stores is clearer now that a buyer has stepped forward for the defunct national retailer formerly known as Lumber Liquidators.
LL Flooring’s Santa Rosa store at 2716 Santa Rosa Ave. is among 219 locations and a Virginia distribution center that private-equity firm F9 Investments wants to continue operating, if the Bankruptcy Court approves the offer, according to a court filing Wednesday. Those stores would be going back to the original name of Lumber Liquidators.
But the Fairfield store at 1595 Holiday Lane remained on the list of 94 sites that were already set to close before the filing for Chapter 11 reorganization on Aug. 12. Another 117 stores across the country will be closed, bringing the total to be shuttered to 211, the company said.
Hilco Merchant Services was hired Aug. 9 to manage the closeout sales at the stores, which is expected to wrap at the end of this month for the initial 94 stores, according to a filing.
F9’s purchase agreement was announced Friday . The Virginia-based retailer had told the court Aug. 30 it planned to close all stores within 12 weeks and totally shut down after not being able to come to terms with a buyer since the bankruptcy filing.
Miami Beach, Florida-based F9 is owned by Tom Sullivan, who founded Lumber Liquidators in 1993 in Massachusetts, The Associated Press reported. He had battled management of the retailer earlier this year in his eventually successful bid to get himself and others elected to the board, according to the outlet. He told the AP that he plans to bring back the Lumber Liquidators name.
The retailer faced a string of expensive setbacks over the past decade, including $92 million in fines and settlements. A 2015 “60 Minutes” segment noted the company was selling products with dangerous levels of formaldehyde, and the company stopped imports of those items from China in May of that year. But the fallout led to $36 million in class-action lawsuits in 2017 and $33 million in federal penalties in 2019.
And in 2016 the company paid out $23 million to resolve regulatory action over selling illegally smuggled wood from the Russian habitats of endangered tigers.
The Santa Rosa store relocated to the 10,500-square-foot 2716 Santa Rosa Ave. location in 2021 from Piner Road on the west side of the city where it had been for over a decade. The flooring retailer came to the Santa Rosa Avenue site after Pier 1 Imports, which had been there for 32 years, went bankrupt in 2020, according to San Rafael-based Seagate Properties, which has managed the property since 1991.
The 6,430-square-foot Fairfield location fronting on Interstate 80 opened in May 2014, and the lease was set to expire this November, according to a court filing. The owners of the nearly 43,000-square-foot neighborhood shopping center where the store is located, Fairfield Highway LLC and Oliver Atwater LLC, purchased it in January 2022 for $4.8 million, according to public records and the property listing.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at [email protected] or 707-521-4256.
