Lorenz Appliance will close the doors of its Homewood location in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. Ace Hardware in Cherry Creek is set to move into Lorenz Appliance’s location. This will make room for a Franciscan Health center. It will be at the current Ace Hardware location and fill up neighboring empty storefronts.
To make room for Franciscan Health, Lorenz Appliance was asked by Cherry Creek’s ownership to move. They were offered a smaller place in the plaza, but they declined.
“The only space he had available was about 3,700 square feet. And that was technically too small for us,” Lorenz Appliance co-owner Don Lorenz said, adding that the current space is more than twice as large. “It wasn’t our decision to leave. He asked us to leave.”
Lorenz, a Crete resident and Homewood-Flossmoor High School graduate, owns Lorenz Appliance with his brother Brett Lorenz. He said that the family business has moved around to different locations for more than 60 years. Serving customers from the northernmost suburbs to areas south of Kankakee, he said most customers order online or over the phone.
All the mid to high-end dishwashers, refrigerators and other home appliances inside the Homewood store will be moved to their Mokena location within the month. Lorenz said operating out of one location instead of two will make more “fiscal sense.” Moving to and remodeling the smaller space in Cherry Creek wasn’t feasible, he said.
Brent Seiler, the owner of North Star Properties which owns Cherry Creek, described the changes being made to the plaza as “shuffling around some tenants.” He said Cherry Creek is trying to make way for not only Franciscan Health but other possible new tenants that he can’t name at this time.
“We signed some new leases with the Franciscan group, the hospital. That causes us to displace some tenants. We needed to open up the Lorenz space to accommodate somebody else,” Seiler said.
Regarding what kind of medical care will be in the Franciscan Health center, Seiler said he can’t answer at this time. He said Franciscan Health will likely make an announcement soon.
Seiler said the changes being made will fill up empty storefronts and hopefully increase foot traffic at Cherry Creek.
“The amount of volume and space that Franciscan will bring – I think it’s going to shine a big light on the center. We’re going to change the landscape of the property and I think it’s going to be much different,” Seiler said.
Jonathan Groboski, the floor manager at Ace Hardware, said Ace will move the inventory to a slightly smaller location in the plaza by removing items that don’t sell as well.
“It’s going to be a headache setting it all up and everything – but I do feel like it’s going to help us out in the long run,” Groboski said. “In the past, we’ve had issues where the Ace app says we have certain things in stock but when the customer gets here, we don’t have it in stock. So, hopefully, with us moving all the items to the new location, it’ll help us pick back up with the inventory counts.”