Furnishings store Elan is closing after 37 years in Omaha

Elan Contemporary Furnishings is closing after 37 years in Omaha, most recently at 129th Street and West Center Road.

“Obviously it's been a difficult economy for us. And we're in our 60s and just decided it's time for us to close the store, kind of semi-retire in a way,” said Connie Stevenson, who owns the store with her husband of 43 years, Gary. “It's making us very sad, because we've always enjoyed our customers and our employees. When you don't have any kids, they become your kids.”

The store employs 18, not including the Stevensons, but had employed as many as 55 when it operated two stores five years ago.

Located in the Montclair on Center shopping center, the store closed this week to take inventory and will reopen Thursday to sell its remaining furniture, Connie Stevenson said.

“We have a massive amount of inventory and will run probably a two- to three-month inventory sale,” she said. “It could take that long to reduce our inventory.”

The store will close after everything is sold, but no specific date has been set, Stevenson said.

The store mailed letters Thursday to all customers with pending orders assuring people that they will get their merchandise, she said.

Elan started under a different name in a different shopping center but came to be known as a premier provider of contemporary furnishings.

“We basically drew people from 300 to 400 miles away,” Stevenson said. “We were probably one of the largest contemporary stores between Chicago and Denver.”

In 1972, the Stevensons opened a 2,000-square-foot store called the Shelf Shop in Rockbrook Village shopping center on the southwest corner of 108th Street and West Center Road. It sold wall units, but the Stevensons loved contemporary furniture so much that after about a year, they started adding contemporary pieces to their offerings.

They expanded twice within the shopping center but moved to their current 22,000-square-foot location in 1996 when they wanted to expand even further.

They also opened Elan Urban Furnishings on the bottom level of the Old Market Lofts at 10th and Jones Streets in November 2000. But the owners closed that store in July 2004 after a fire at the nearby Butternut Coffee complex left the area's development plans in limbo.

“Somewhere in the middle we joined a prestigious buying group called Contemporary Design Group,” Stevenson said. “That was an organization of small private contemporary stores that banded together to do advertising and buying and share marketing ideas. Within our group of about 50 stores, about 17 or 18 have closed.”

Forces other than slowed consumer spending have hit the furnishings industry in recent years — namely, the proliferation of Chinese products in the marketplace and the declining value of the dollar, Stevenson explained. That decline in value led to Elan paying about twice as much for European goods, such as its trademark Italian pieces.

“It made it difficult to bring in the things that made us very special. Everybody hears about the car industry because they are huge, but the furniture industry has had a lot of difficulty in the last couple years.”

The recession led to slower sales, which for Elan seemed to especially worsen starting in February of this year, she said.

That, combined with their ages, led the Stevensons to the difficult decision to close. Connie Stevenson said they plan to stay in Omaha, along with their two golden retrievers that have accompanied them to work every day.

“It's 37 years of our life, and blood, sweat and tears,” she said. “This is our life.”

Montclair on Center is about 90 percent occupied, but Elan's closing would drop that figure to the mid- to upper-80s range, said Randy Lenhoff, president and chief operating officer of Seldin Co., which owns and manages the center.

The vacancies are small tenant spaces as well as an anchor site, which Sports Authority left in 2008.

Lenhoff said Montclair will miss Elan, which he described as a successful subanchor that has done a great job providing unique furnishings and satisfying customers.

Its closing, however, comes as other retailers at Montclair on Center and at other Seldin properties are starting to report improved sales, Lenhoff said. That leads him to think that the Omaha retail market may have hit bottom.

He also said that Seldin is talking to local and national retailers who might lease space there or at its other centers, which include Westwood Plaza near 120th Street and West Center Road, the Kmart center at 50th and L Streets and Benson Park Plaza near 72nd Street and Ames Avenue.

But retailers are moving slowly, he said.

“Yes we are disappointed that we are losing a good retailer, but on the other hand … this is a very good location, and we will be able to get this space rented to a good, viable retailer,” Lenhoff said. “We're very optimistic that Montclair shopping center will be full again in the future. It's hard for me to predict when that will be, but I think it will be in the reasonably near future.”

Contact the writer:

444-1183, christine.laue@owh.com

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