MIAMI-City Furniture is getting active in South Florida’s commercial real estate scene. The furniture retailer announced a $17.5 million expansion program and just sold two older sites.

City Furniture plans to construct or renovate five stores from Miami to West Palm Beach, beginning with the major renovation of its Dadeland store in Pinecrest. The company also sold two older stores for $6.8 million.

The expansion program calls for three store openings during 2012, creating work for several hundred construction tradespeople. City Furniture president Keith Koenig said the company will start hiring in the coming months for a total of more than 75 permanent jobs it plans to create in the region by early 2013.

“We’ve been acquiring properties for this expansion for the last few years, and while it may seem we’re going against the economic tide, the timing is right,” Koenig said in a statement. “We’re seeing increases in year-over-year sales, plus well-timed opportunities to dramatically increase sales at proven locations.” 

Koenig announced plans to build on the company’s “green” City Furniture/Ashley Furniture HomeStores superstore concept. The firm will roll out the upscale environmentally friendly store designs it debuted in Boca Raton earlier this year.

Part of the expansion program meant selling off former City Furniture stores in Pompano Beach and Lantana. Stiles represented City Furniture on the deals, and is also handling sales of two other former City Furniture showrooms, one in Boca Raton facility and another in Pembroke Park.

“Demand is picking up for well located retail and industrial properties in the market,” Ryan Karlin, Stiles vice president of Retail Sales, tells GlobeSt.com. “We have experienced increased activity and deal making on most of our South Florida listings and we expect this to continue on these product types into next year.”

Spring Holdings Realty purchased the 58,811-square-foot Pompano Beach former City Furniture showroom in a $3.525 million transaction this month. Spring Footwear plans to retrofit the former furniture store at 1001 W. Lantana Holdings recently closed on the $3.3 million purchase of the 44,000-square-foot former City Furniture store at 1330 W. Lantana Rd. in Lantana.

“The buildings both had unique characteristics—Lantana was a converted strip retail center and Pompano was a distribution facility that was upgraded into a retail showroom,” Karlin says. “They also had great visibility, which made these buildings very marketable.”