A Richmond-area furniture retailer has reopened Ashley Furniture HomeStore in Roanoke, after the store closed last year. Sam Zeidan, who owns Home-Makers Furniture in Mechanicsville, is the new owner of the Roanoke store. He said Monday that he's still getting the large storefront in order, including hooking up the phone lines.

Customers can buy furniture there, but delivery won't begin until proper trucks arrive in Roanoke, which could be later this week.

In September, Baker Group International, the former license owner of this Roanoke location, abruptly closed the Ashley Furniture store on Valley View Boulevard near Valley View Mall. The closing angered many customers who had paid for furniture orders but had not received them.

A short time after the closing, Wisconsin-based Ashley Furniture Industries Inc. said it planned to deliver all back-ordered furniture to customers who had paid for it.

The new Roanoke Ashley store will help customers who have one-year warranties on furniture purchased at the former store, Zeidan said.

At 45,000 square feet, his new Ashley enterprise is much larger than Zeidan's store in Mechanicsville, which is approximately 20,000 square feet. Still, Zeidan is familiar with Ashley Furniture brands through his own independent furniture retail business, which he has owned since 1988. Before furniture, he was in the furrier retail business.

Zeidan would not disclose how much he paid for the Roanoke Ashley store. Ashley Furniture Industries has at least 350 stores nationwide.

"They don't want to be in the same situation that they got into before," Zeidan said, referring to the back-ordered furniture.

"Everybody wants this store to work."

Zeidan already has hired some employees who worked at the former Roanoke Ashley store.

Employees are working from laptop computers for now, he said. Computers, flat-screen televisions and other electronics were stolen from the store while it was vacant, said John Stiles, a spokesman for CanonSkye Corp., which is Zeidan's new Roanoke company.

A burglary was reported there Dec. 8, said Aisha Johnson, Roanoke police spokeswoman. She said it occurred between Nov. 20 and Dec. 8, and no one has been arrested. She did not provide a cost estimate of items taken.

For now, some furniture is discounted 25 percent at the Roanoke Ashley store. Shipments of new furniture are on the way, Stiles said.

Plans also are in the works to open a local Ashley Furniture warehouse, he said.