Furniture retailer set to move to Fort Smith

Gov. Asa Hutchinson (left) talks with Larry Zigerelli, chief executive officer of Furniture Factory Outlet Home, at a Tuesday afternoon news conference in Fort Smith.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson (left) talks with Larry Zigerelli, chief executive officer of Furniture Factory Outlet Home, at a Tuesday afternoon news conference in Fort Smith.

FORT SMITH -- Furniture Factory Outlet Home is moving its headquarters and manufacturing operations from Oklahoma to Fort Smith.

The move creates 64 full-time jobs in the city. The new home base for the furniture retailer will occupy about 180,000 square feet of space in the Spartan Logistics building -- the former Whirlpool distribution center.

Larry Zigerelli, chief executive of Furniture Factory Outlet Home, said Tuesday that the jobs will include executive-level positions in management, marketing, logistics, financing and customer service along with support staff. He declined to give a pay range but said the jobs were well-paying. Manufacturing operations will include mattresses, home decor items and some wood products.

Zigerelli told a crowd at the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce that Furniture Factory Outlet Home had a history in the city, with the company's first store opening on Rogers Avenue in 1984. Since then, the company has expanded to 36 retail locations in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas.

The move to Fort Smith will help facilitate further expansion, he said, with plan to add four to five stores each year. Zigerelli said growth will be focused in both small and large markets in the four states where the company now operates, but plans include strategic moves into contiguous states when the timing is right.

In Arkansas, the company operates 17 stores that employ 151. He said the Fort Smith operation, with logistics, headquarters and manufacturing all under one roof, will be more efficient than the company's setup in Muldrow, Okla., where the divisions occupy separate buildings.

"I'm excited to be in Fort Smith," he said.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson cracked jokes with the crowd of about 100, saying he's often asked why he spends so much time in the River Valley.

"I tell them it's because you have more job announcements," he said.

Hutchinson said job creation efforts like the Furniture Factory Outlet Home deal don't just happen, but require cooperation of the private sector, area chambers of commerce and municipal and state governments.

In October, Spartan Logistics finalized its purchase of Whirlpool Corp.'s 620,000-square-foot warehouse in Fort Smith. The warehouse is part of a 152-acre complex that includes 2.2 million square feet of buildings, along with Whirlpool's vacant plant, which was not part of the deal.

Whirlpool closed the plant in June 2012. At its peak, the appliance-maker employed 4,600 workers in Fort Smith and had about 800 when it shut the plant down. At the time, economists and city officials said the closing hurt the local economy.

Later that year, a wind-turbine plant built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. was mothballed before a single job was created. The Chaffee Crossing plant still sits idle.

Since then, Fort Smith has seen slow but consistent growth. Two significant projects started this year in Chaffee Crossing. In March, construction started on an $80 million osteopathic medical school, and work began on a new $30 million corporate headquarters for Fort Smith-based trucking and logistics company ArcBest.

The Arkansas Tech University Business Index for the first quarter of 2015 showed Fort Smith ranked highest in the state with a rating of 108.05, up 0.44 points from the same period last year. Bentonville was ranked second for the quarter with 104.87 and Springdale was third with 104.17.

The index includes labor, housing, construction and retail sales information. A rating above 100 indicates a city is faring better than the state average.

Marc Fusaro, associate professor of economics at the College of Business at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, said Fort Smith has been a powerhouse on the index for more than a year. He noted growth in the retail sector and construction were strong points in the city's economy.

He said Fort Smith's economy is more diverse than in the days when Whirlpool was a major employer. He said the city has seen more, but smaller, projects in recent years, which results in a more stable economy overall.

Furniture Factory Outlet Home's move to Fort Smith generates several benefits, Fusaro said. Headquarters jobs tend to pay better than average, and companies' philanthropic efforts tend to focus on the cities they call home.

Zigerelli hinted that would be the case, telling those gathered in Fort Smith that for Furniture Factory Outlet Home, community involvement was important and that he looked forward to a "deeper partnership" with the city and the region.

Preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Labor on the Fort Smith Metropolitan Statistical Area -- which covers Sebastian, Crawford and Franklin counties in Arkansas and Le Flore and Sequoyah counties in Oklahoma -- for May show unemployment at 5.9 percent, down from 6.2 percent for the same period in 2014. The statewide preliminary unemployment rate for May was 5.6 percent, down from 6.1 percent a year earlier.

Fort Smith's labor force in May stood at 121,766, up from 118,798 the same month in 2014 but still far below the decade high of 129,983 in 2007, before recession hit in 2008 and the region's labor force began to decline.

Scott Hardin, director of communications for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, said incentives for the Furniture Factory Outlet Home move include a cash rebate of 3.9 percent of payroll created for new jobs for a four-year term, and $200,000 from the Governor's Quick Action Closing Fund for infrastructure improvements at the Fort Smith facility.

Business on 07/08/2015

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