United Furniture Warehouse, a Canadian-based 155-store discount chain, is considering closing one or more of its three stores in the Spokane-Coeur dAlene area as part of a scaling back of its struggling U.S. operations, says company President John Volken says.


The stores here are located at 4630 E. Sprague in East Spokane, 551 E. Hawthorne Road on Spokanes North Side, and 406 E. Neider in Coeur dAlene. Theyre among 56 stores that United Furniture Warehouse still operates in the U.S. after having closed two last month, one in Oregon and the other in Utah, Volken says from the companys headquarters in Coquitlam, British Columbia. At this point, its considering closing up to about eight more stores, he says.


As a whole, we are committed to the U.S. Weve been doing business there for almost 14 years, Volken says.


He adds, though, that a sharp drop-off in business immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a negligible rebound since then have forced the company to explore a variety of financial options for its U.S. operations, including a possible Chapter 11 reorganization filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.


Of this area specifically, Volken says, We really did well there for awhile, but Spokane is an uphill battle (now).


He says he doubts the company will close its Coeur dAlene store, and he would prefer not to close the 35,000-square-foot East Spokane store, which is the largest of the three. He emphasizes, though, that the decisions on what U.S. stores will close will depend on a number of factors beyond the stores financial performance, such as lease terms and how readily new tenants or buyers can be found for properties that would be vacated. Due to the variables involved, its unclear for now when those decisions will be made, he says.


In the meantime, Volken has been having to deal with an investigation by the Washington state attorney generals Spokane office into possibly deceptive advertising. Owen Clarke, a senior assistant attorney general here, said last week that he considers large, brightly colored advertising banners that have been displayed on the Spokane-area United Furniture Warehouse stores recently to be misleading.


The banners include the words STORE CLOSING in large bold letters and SELECT LOCATIONS in much smaller, less conspicuous type.


Clarke said that after learning United Furniture Warehouse had no definite plans to close any of its stores in Washington, he asked the company to revise its advertising. Theyve been sending us some proposed revisions, none of which are acceptable thus far. We have an issue with them, he said.


Volken said last Thursday that the company had prepared new banners, in response to the concerns of the attorney generals office here, and expected to have them installed in place of the old ones by last weekend, which he hoped would resolve the matter.


He expressed frustration at the controversy over the signs, saying the company was only trying to let customers know through a sale event that it was closing some of its stores, and he added, Its very hard to make everybody happy.