Construction continues on Ashley Furniture store
By Bonnie Edwards
Published in News on June 11, 2007 1:45 PM
Ashley Furniture will build a new warehouse in Clayton, which will speed up the delivery of furniture orders placed at Goldsboro's new showroom when it opens early next year.
Land preparation is already under way for the Goldsboro store, and construction will begin soon in Clayton, officials said late last week.
Both the store and the warehouse are expected to open at about the same time.
"The timing will be real close," said DeShon Hodge of Frede Enterprises, the company building the Clayton and Goldsboro facilities. Frede already has franchise stores in Durham, Raleigh and Fayettevile.
The company is currently leasing a warehouse in Morrisville. That facility will close, and the 50 employees there will join 50 new employees from the Johnston County area when the new 110,000 square-foot distribution center and showroom opens just off U.S. 70 in Clayton. The 100-member team will be made up of customer service staff, warehousemen and delivery drivers.
The 40,000-square-foot Ashley showroom in Goldsboro will employ about 20 people and will be the anchor for the Goldsboro Promenade shopping center at the site of the old Litchfield Cinema on Berkeley Boulevard.
Assisting in bringing the warehouse closer was Atlantic Coast Commercial, the development company that is handling the leasing of buildings in Goldsboro Promenade.
Emory Croom, a Goldsboro native and one of the partners of Atlantic Coast Commercial, said last week his company is negotiating with two other companies to bring tenants to a 6,000-square-foot and a 2,500-square-foot section of the shopping center.
"I hope we will be able to make an announcement soon," said Croom, who also helped bring Ashley stores to Winston-Salem and Greensboro. Another company owns those franchises.
Frede Enterprises is fairly new. The Durham store was first to open in 2004. Raleigh came next in December 2005, followed by Fayetteville in March 2006.
"We feel Goldsboro is a great town, and we will be good for the market and them for us. We feel it's a good match," Hodge said when asked why the company chose to bring new stores to Wayne and Johnston counties and to bring the warehouse closer.
The new distribution center is going to be situated for greater accessibility, he said, between I-40 and I-95.