Furnishings for Hope on the move

A charitable mission to help less-fortunate people establish new households just got bigger.

Furnishings for Hope, a retail furniture store that opened 11 months ago, had to move to a larger storefront where it will be able to accommodate increased donations and a newly established customer base.

“We actually loved that location on Northwest Boulevard and Monroe,” said Inga Weber, store manager. The store had “big beautiful windows, historic building, high traffic counts; it just needed to be three times bigger.”

The nonprofit retail store run by Catholic Charities will reopen Friday in its new location on Trent Avenue, next door to the nonprofit agency’s furniture donation center. The new location has about 7,000 square feet of space, compared to 2,000 square feet at the previous store.

Furnishings for Hope is a money-making retail business devoted to generating cash for Catholic Charities’ social programs. It sells furniture donated to Catholic Charities and uses the proceeds to fund the agency’s furniture bank, which is a community service to provide basic furnishings and household items to low-income people.

The new showroom floor allows the retailer to display the bulk of its inventory, including large bedroom sets, living room suites and elaborate china hutches.

“We noticed an increase in donations, both quality and quantity,” said Jim Nicks, operations manager for Furnishings for Hope and the charity’s furniture bank. “The kind of stuff we didn’t get before.”

He added, “Having a high visibility location allowed us to let people know we had a furniture bank.”

Some people have just driven up to the store with a load of furniture to donate, he said.

Nicks, Weber and volunteers have spent a few weeks setting up displays in the store’s new location to prepare for Friday’s opening. With the furniture bank right next door, replenishing their inventory will be much easier.

“We have brand new, vintage and some unique, interesting stuff; a little bit of everything,” Nicks said. “There’s constantly new furniture, something new every day.”