JOLIET – Two furniture retailers plan to open stores in Joliet.
Bob's Discount Furniture and Art Van PureSleep plan to open stores near the Louis Joliet Mall. The Art Van store is a mattress store.
Bob's Discount Furniture is renovating the former Sports Authority space at 2700 Plainfield Road in the Louis Joliet Pointe Shopping Center.
The retailer is targeting a May opening, Joliet Economic Development Director Steve Jones said.
Art Van, a furniture retailer that also has a chain of mattress stores, has one of its PureSleep stores slated for new space being developed at the former site of a Pizza Hut restaurant, Jones said.
The site at 2901 Plainfield Road is being redeveloped into a strip mall after the Pizza Hut building was demolished this month.
Art Van PureSleep will take up 3,500 square feet, Jones said. Also going into the new space are Aspen Dental at 3,500 square feet and an AT&T store at 1,584 square feet.
Jones noted that home furnishings is a category identified as a market need after a retail study of the mall area that was contracted by the city. Bob's Discount Furniture in particular fits that category, he said.
"This helps fill a market need for what we need here in Joliet," he said.