LL Flooring Gets Lifeline, Sells Distribution Center To Blackstone's Data Center Arm
The flooring company formerly known as Lumber Liquidators has staved off extinction in its bankruptcy process, finding a buyer for more than 100 of its stores and its primary distribution center.
Richmond, Virginia-based LL Flooring sold off roughly $144M in assets to its founder, Tom Sullivan, who leads private equity firm F9 Investments, CoStar reports. Sullivan, the former CEO of LL Flooring, acquired 219 of the retailer's 430 stores and the company's intellectual rights for a cash consideration between $40M and $43M.
LL Flooring also sold off a 996K SF distribution center in Sandston, Virginia, to QTS Realty Trust, a data center developer owned by Blackstone, for $104.8M.
The stores Sullivan isn't buying will be closed, and the retailer plans to temporarily lease back 616K SF at the distribution center for two years, CoStar reported. F9 is also in the process of acquiring land in Tennessee and plans to build a new LL Flooring distribution center once its two-year lease expires.
The retailer had floated the idea of liquidation last month after it failed to secure a buyer. LL Flooring planned to shut all 430 of its stores and lay off its roughly 1,900 employees. However, the plan took a turn when Sullivan announced his intention to buy the stores.
The retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August, citing the subsiding demand for home improvement projects coming out of the pandemic, among other reasons.
The company was founded as Lumber Liquidators in 1993 and acquired by private equity firm TA Associates in 2005. It went public two years later.
The company was in hot water in 2015 after it was alleged the retailer was selling laminate flooring that contained unsafe levels of formaldehyde. The company settled with the federal government and plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit and rebranded in 2022 as LL Flooring.
