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April 13, 2020

After state-backed expansion, Bob’s Discount Furniture HQ in Manchester listed for sale

Photo | CBRE Bob’s Discount Furniture’s corporate headquarters in Manchester.
By Joe Cooper

The landlord of Bob’s Discount Furniture’s corporate headquarters in Manchester has hung a for sale sign on the facility that benefited from a state-subsidized expansion in recent years. 

The asking price was not disclosed.

Waterstone Properties Group, of Needham, Mass., has retained realty broker-advisor CBRE to market the 9-acre property on Tolland Turnpike to potential buyers. A spokesperson for Bob’s says the company has no plans to leave the space and is committed to its existing lease there through Oct. 2032. 

The 107,083-square-foot Class A office property at 434 Tolland Turnpike is fully-leased by the national furniture retailer, which received a low-interest loan worth $7 million from the state Department of Community and Economic Development (DECD) to expand the Manchester operation.

Completed in fall 2017, the expansion included construction of a new three-story building adjacent to the retailer’s existing showroom and warehouse on Tolland Turnpike.

The state-backed expansion was aimed at creating 125 new jobs in Manchester over a five-year period. It was also meant to steer Bob’s majority shareholder, Boston-based private equity firm Bain Capital, away from relocating the company’s headquarters to the Boston area.

Bob Kaufman and Eugene H. Rosenberg established the company’s first showroom in Newington in 1991. Bob’s has since become the nation’s 11th largest furniture chain with 120 stores across 22 states, according to the company’s website. 

Waterstone bought the land from Kaufman for $450,000 in Sept. 2016, and the property now is valued at $17.4 million, town records show.

In Connecticut, it also has stores in Southington, Orange, Norwalk, New London and Bridgeport, among other locations.

The company says it currently employs 285 workers in Manchester, and 5,729 nationwide.

Today, Bob’s records annual gross earnings of approximately $1.2 billion, according to CBRE’s property listing. 

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