From Home Quarters to Jordan's Furniture

Address: 1 Underprice Way, Natick, MA, 01760

Original Facility built: 1994?

Construction Stage: 1997?

New Facility opening: 1998

Known stores in former: Home Quarters (HQ)

Current stores: Jordan's Furniture, Kelly's Roast Beef, Comcast IMAX 3D Theater at Jordan's Furniture

Mall (Store) website: http://www.jordans.com

News stories: None

After the days of the era of True Value and Ace, but before Home Depot, the kingpins of the home improvement industry were Kmart's Builders Square concept, and a company known as Hechinger.  Hechinger operated home improvement stores under the name Hechinger, but was better known in New England for its Home Quarters (HQ) concept, which was devised in 1985. One of the first stores in the area was located in Shrewsbury on Route 9. However, due to the the prosperous economy and the demand for a home-improvement store in MetroWest, Hechinger decided to build an HQ store upon a large hill directly south of route 9. The roads and the parking lot of the store would be located in Framingham, and the building itself would be located in Natick. Store construction began in 1994 and the store opened in 1995. However, the store faced fierce competition from the Home Depot on Speen Street that opened shortly after. The two fought harshly for the small (at the time) do-it-yourself market, and Home Depot won the battle. The HQ store closed in either 1996 or 1997, with the entire company following shortly after. The store was a decent place to shop, and appeared to be a smaller version of Home Depot, and I specifically remember a large fan department and a nice greenhouse.

Upon the store's closure, the site remained vacant for a short while. Soon enough, Jordan's Furniture, a locally based furniture company notorious for it's advertisement that imitate well-known campaigns, decided to reuse the site as it's MetroWest superstore, bringing along with them the Revere-based Kelly's Roast Beef, another popular local chain known for roast beef and fried clams. Following an extensive renovation, the store opened in 1998, and the road connecting the store to route 9 was renamed Underprice Way.

One particular problem with the HQ store was its location. Boards and other construction materials routinely fell off of overloaded trucks and other vehicles trying to climb the massive hill. This has not been an issue for Jordan's Furniture as their products are transported in cube trucks. Another interesting factoid is that HQ claimed that the store was located in Framingham, proven further by the fact that their phone number used the Framingham exchange 872. However, Jordan's claims to be located in Natick at present.

Each Jordan's Furniture provides an element of "shoppertainment". The Nashua store has free cookies, the Avon store has a motion ride, and the Natick store was given a Mardi Gras theme. But to take furniture shopping to the next level, Jordan's added an IMAX theater to the right side of the store in August 2002. The theater became an immediate success, so much so that the company incorporated a theater into its Reading store, which opened in 2004.

My Pictures: Taken June 18, 2006

The facade of Jordan's Furniture, in the former Home Quarters building. Note the purple parking lines; Jordan's even carries the Mardi Gras theme outside. Kelly's Roast Beef is located to the left of the massive entrance.

Media: A picture of an HQ in North Carolina, to give you a sense of what the Framingham/Natick store looked like; floorplans below.


Related Links: None