Gardiner Wolf Furniture Closing On Churchville Road

BEL AIR, MD — A furniture retailer in Bel Air is closing. The Gardiner Wolf Furniture store on Churchville Road will shutter as part of a mass closure of Wolf Furniture stores across Maryland.

The furniture retailer in the Campus Hills Shopping Center will close by May 9, according to the Maryland Department of Labor. The state was notified Monday that 17 employees will lose their jobs when the store on Route 22 goes out of business.

Wolf Furniture operates stores in Bel Air, Catonsville, Frederick, Hagerstown, Pasadena, Towson and Westminster. All are closing, according to the Maryland Department of Labor.

The closures come after the region's large furniture retailers consolidated in recent years and its parent company, Art Van Furniture, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday.

"Despite our best efforts to remain open, the company's brands and operating performance have been hit hard by a challenging retail environment," Art Van Furniture spokesperson Diane Charles said of the store closures.

Liquidation sales began Friday, March 6, at Art Van stores in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri as well as select Wolf stores in Maryland and Virginia, according to a news release from AVF Holdings.

Wolf Furniture, founded in 1902 in Pennsylvania, purchased Baltimore-based Gardiner's in 2015 when the leaders of that company planned to retire.

Art Van Furniture, a Michigan-headquartered operation, bought Wolf in 2017. That was the year Art Van Furniture founder Art Van Elslander, who died in 2018, sold the business he built into one of the nation's top 10 furniture sellers to private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners LP. Last week, Art Van Furniture began winding down operations at its Midwest stores.

Wolf Furniture stores in Pennsylvania will be purchased by Levin Furniture founder Robert Levin, pending court approval, AVF Holdings reported.

Levin said he was "coming out of retirement to save the company from going out of business" to acquire 44 Levin and Wolf furniture and mattress stores in Ohio and Pennsylvania.