Carls opening to benefit cancer center
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, April 21, 2003
Miami — Carls Furniture will celebrate its new 80,000-square-foot store on the Palmetto Expressway here this week with a benefit for the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.
A grand opening party is set for 7 to 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, at Carls Furniture and the attached, 15,000-square-foot Carls Patio showroom at 1400 NW 167th St.
Fred Friedman, president of the Boca Raton, Fla.-based Top 100 store, said the company is proud to support the Cancer Center.
"I can speak from personal experience when I tell you that the people at UM/Sylvester are the very best in the nation. I will forever be indebted to these fine people, and it gives all of us at Carls great pleasure to help them and support their work," he said.
UM/Sylvester, founded in 1992, conducts research and treats more than 2,500 newly diagnosed cancer patients.
In January 2001, Friedman was one of those patients, with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He has been in remission for nearly two years. Friedman's partners in Carls, Mike Baker and Bobby Dragin, suggested the company host a benefit for the facility.
The new store is Carls' second in six months. In November, the company opened a 60,000-square-foot furniture showroom and a 15,000-square-foot patio store in Coconut Creek, Fla. They are attached to a new 266,000-square-foot distribution center and corporate offices that are set to open in June.
The Palmetto Expressway store nearly completes Carls' expansion plans for South Florida's affluent East Coast. The company plans to begin construction on a new patio store in Stuart, Fla., and remodel and expand its existing furniture store there.
