Avrick Furniture calls it quits

By Richard Lee
Assistant Business Editor
Large lime-green banners hanging in the display windows say it all: A retail institution

in South Norwalk that served thousands of shoppers in nearly 70 years is closing.
Avrick Furniture, founded in the depths of the Great Depression in 1937 by Louis Avrick, is scheduled go out of business Jan. 26.
Avrick’s grandsons, Bob, Gary and Lewis, have decided to close the store at 16 N. Main St. because of the increasing challenges of doing business, said Bob Avrick, 50, the eldest of the three brothers.
“The furniture industry has changed drastically. It’s not the competition. It’s the furniture industry. For some reason, furniture isn’t really like electronics or nice cars. Expenses have gone up dramatically. When they put these signs up yesterday it broke my heart,” he said, standing in the first-floor gallery surrounded by bedroom and living room furniture tagged with red and green markdown signs.
All three brothers got their start in the working world at the store, which moved from a small showroom on Elizabeth Street in South Norwalk to its current location in 1972 when their father, Irving Avrick, bought the Jacoby building.
“We started polishing furniture when we were 9 years old. When our friends were out having fun, we were working here,” said Lewis Avrick, 41. “All good things must come to an end. It’s time to move on to the next stage of our lives.”
None of the three, however, said they had any solid future plans.
“After 28 years, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Bob Avrick said, adding that they had no desire to sell the business or move to another location.
But he and his family have a solid asset in the 40,000-square-foot, three-story building that Irving Avrick had the foresight to acquire when South Norwalk was down on its luck and showed few signs that better times were ahead.
“My father believed in South Norwalk,” Gary Avrick said.
The brothers carried on the business after their father died in 2000, and are now working to find jobs for their 13 employees.
Despite the long hours and his responsibility to help his father as a child, Gary Avrick said he enjoyed the job.
“I’m happy to have been given the opportunity to sell furniture and meet people,” he said. Many of those he and his brothers greeted when they walked into the store became loyal customers, but there weren’t enough of them to keep the business going as large chains like Raymour and Flanigan moved into the region.
As a family-owned business, however, Avrick Furniture outlasted two of its local chain-store competitors, Levitz on Connecticut Avenue, which closed this year, and Huffman Koos, which closed at Loehmann’s Plaza on West Avenue in 2004.
“It’s an end of an era for South Norwalk and for the Avrick family,” Gary Avrick said, saying a city ordinance resulting in a parking fee for the municipal lot in back of the building dissuaded people from coming to the store. “People just don’t want to pay.”
He also said that despite efforts to bring more retail into the district, South Norwalk remains known mostly for its restaurants and nightspots.
The family has put the building on the market and is talking to several interested parties.
Tad Diesel, the city’s director of marketing and business development, said the loss of an institution like Avrick Furniture is upsetting to a community, but he is optimistic that the building will not be vacant long.
“This location provides great opportunity for enhancement of the vibrant SoNo business neighborhood,” Diesel said.
Despite the closing, Nicolas Pacella, president of the South Norwalk Business Association, remains an advocate of attracting more retailers to the district. A lagging economy and competition from chain retailers may have contributed to the store’s demise, he said.
“I didn’t see it coming,” he said. “They’re one of the oldest merchants in South Norwalk.”
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