Mattress World store, Livonia, Michigan Mattress World, Inc., doing business as Mattress World of Michigan was a mattress retailer with stores in Michigan and seven in Indiana in the Midwestern United States. Its headquarters were in Genoa Township, Michigan, near Howell. In a press release, Art Van stated that Mattress World catered "to a value conscious consumer who is interested in national brands at the lowest prices, selling brands such as Tempur-Pedic, Simmons, Sealy and Serta."[3] Shandra Martinez of MLive described the chain as being "value-based".[4] Furniture Today wrote that Mattress World was "more promotional" than Art Van, the company which acquired the chain in 2011. The stores were usually located in bedroom communities and not in big box store corridors. The stores were freestanding. The chain was founded in 1996.[7] Its first store opened in Howell, Michigan in 1998. In 2002 Mattress World had three stores in the state of Michigan. Mattress World was, according to a Furniture Today article, the apparent high bidder for six Mattress Discounters stores in Metro Detroit;
Mattress Discounters was exiting the Michigan market. In 2009 the company had 22 locations. In May during that year it acquired seven Mattress Gallery stores in Indianapolis; the Mattress Gallery stores, previously owned by the Indianapolis-based Today's Bedroom One, had closed in April 2009. The company planned to convert them into Mattress World locations.[10] The stores reopened as Mattress World locations in June 2009. In 2011 the chain had 28 stores, with 21 in Michigan and 7 in Indianapolis.[7] One of its Michigan stores was located in Ann Arbor.[12] At the time it had 100 employees. In May 2011 Mattress World of Michigan was acquired by Art Van Furniture which said it would keep the Mattress World name and the employees.[3] Art Van stated that it may rebrand some stores as Art Van PureSleep.[12] The acquisition of Mattress World gave Art Van its first stores outside of Michigan.[7] The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.[13] Art Van assigned Armando Murillo, previously the employee who established Pure Sleep operations outside of Michigan, as the vice president operating Mattress World.
In 2013, the Mattress World stores were closed, with the majority re-opened as Art Van PureSleep stores. Art Van PureSleep now operates 88 stores both freestanding and inside Art Van Furniture stores, in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. ^ "Welcome to Mattress World of Michigan." Mattress World of Michigan. Retrieved on November 7, 2013. "Corporate: 1212 Fendt Dr, Howell, MI 48843" ^ "Official Zoning Map of Genoa Charter Township." Genoa Charter Township, Michigan. As of September 2008. Retrieved on November 8, 2013. ^ a b Engel, Clint. "Art Van to Buy Chain." Retrieved on November 7, 2013."New strategy: How Art Van Furniture plans to jump into 20 more markets." "In July, Art Van acquired the Howell-based Mattress World, a value-based chain." ^ Furniture Today Staff. "Art Van plans to franchise PureSleep concept nationally." "Yost gets Art Van off the couch: CEO moves company into TVs, flooring, smaller stores." Updated July 27, 2011. Retrieved on November 8, 2013.
"In May, Art Van acquired Mattress World, a Howell-based chain of 28 freestanding mattress stores typically in bedroom communities rather than big box corridors." ^ a b c Duggan, Daniel. "Art Van acquires mattress store chain." ^ "Art Van acquires Howell-based Mattress World, expands stores through Oakland County." Oakland County Prosper, Government of Oakland County. Monday May 16, 2011. "Mattress Discounters sells 54 stores to Sleep Train; will exit Calif., Mich." "The apparent high bidder for the six Detroit-area stores is Mattress World, a Michigan retailer with three other stores in the state. Newton said the Michigan company is not the same Mattress World that earlier this year purchased more than 50 Mattress Discounters stores in the Chicago market.""Mattress World acquires 7 Indiana stores." "Soft sales plague furniture retailers." ^ a b Bomey, Nathan. "Art Van Furniture acquires Mattress World in Michigan retail deal." The Ann Arbor News at MLive. Wednesday May 11, 2011.
^ "WEEK ON THE WEB: Visteon board member resigns amid dispute." "Warren-based Art Van Furniture has acquired the Howell-based Mattress World stores for an undisclosed price and will operate the stores under the Mattress World brand name.""Art Van plans expansion." Updated March 12, 2012. Retrieved on November 8, 2013. on July 20, 2016 at 12:59 PM, updated ANN ARBOR - The Delonis Center homeless shelter in Ann Arbor is eliminating 27 beds in response to funding cuts. The Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, which relies on a combination of public and private funds to run the 77-bed shelter at 312 W. Huron St., announced the decision on Wednesday, July 20, saying it is returning to its original 50-bed capacity due to cuts in crucial local funding. Executive Director Ellen Schulmeister said the loss of more than $100,000 in local funding in recent years has created a budget shortfall that requires cutting expenses and thereby services. She said capacity will be reduced over the next several months by attrition, phasing out beds as clients move out.
Even though there have been successful local efforts to find permanent housing for many chronically homeless people in recent years, Schulmeister said more people are becoming homeless on a regular basis and the cuts aren't indicative of a decrease in demand for beds at the shelter. "Whether we have 77 or we have 50, we don't have enough, so we're just going to deal with it," she said. "I can't point to it and say, 'Well, we don't really need these beds.' We always have had a wait list. We will continue to have a wait list. So, it's just going to be something we have to go through -- a bumpy road -- until we get adjusted, and then we'll continue on." Schulmeister said the Shelter Association will continue to provide case management and other services for clients to help them find housing, regardless of whether they are in the residential program at the Delonis Center. "We have been working very hard in the last several years to be able to house people without them even coming into shelter -- by engagement and providing case management," she said.
"So, even though right now we have 77 beds, we're handling about 150 to 200 cases a day at any given time with our case management. And we're going to continue to do that. "So, even though there may not be a bed for someone, we still are going to hook them up with someone to work with to try to end their homelessness." The four-story Robert J. Delonis Center opened in 2003. It was designed to shelter 50 people -- 35 men and 15 women. In the fall of 2009, in response to the economic downturn and record foreclosures, the city and county requested a temporary expansion of beds. The Shelter Association responded by adding 27 new beds. Schulmeister said the association has absorbed the related staffing and overhead expenses for the past six-plus years, but it can't any longer. She emphasized the changes do not impact winter programs offered by the Shelter Association, which include a seasonal warming center and a rotating shelter program operated in cooperation with local churches.
The Shelter Association has a roughly $2 million budget and about half of it is privately raised. "Any cuts on the government side are very difficult for us to take because of the fact that we rely on that to kind of be our base for stability," Schulmeister said. She cites cuts through the county's coordinating funding process, saying limited human service dollars have been redistributed in response to community mental health needs and a need to invest in permanent supportive housing. "Things have been very difficult for us in the human services arena since Community Mental Health lost so much general fund money," she said. "It's an unfortunate turn of events, but it is what has to happen at this moment in time," she said of eliminating shelter beds. "We lost $70,000 this year and $35,000 the last time, so a little over $105,000 altogether." The city and county, in combination with other partners, doled out $4.6 million to dozens of different agencies through this year's coordinated funding process.
The Shelter Association has seen its annual coordinated funding for residential and non-residential programs drop in recent years from $267,114 to $160,000. Meanwhile, coordinated funding for the shelter's health clinic services has grown from $55,200 to $95,000. The Shelter Association also was receiving $80,761 in coordinated funding for rapid re-housing efforts that have shifted to Avalon Housing. From last year to this year, the Shelter Association's total coordinated funding dropped by $148,226. Not counting the reassigned rapid re-housing dollars, it amounted to a $67,465 cut in agency funding, which is the balance of a $69,127 cut to residential and non-residential programs, and a $1,662 increase for health clinic services. In the previous round in 2014, the agency lost $35,805 in annual funding for its residential and non-residential programs. Andrea Plevek, interim director of the Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development, said the Shelter Association still will receive more than $500,000 in coordinated funding over the next two-year cycle.
Since 2011, she said, the Shelter Association has received more than $1.7 million in coordinated funding. Plevek said federal and state priorities have shifted away from temporary housing to permanent housing, and that has informed local funding decisions. "This shift has been felt community-wide and we understand that has very real impacts on the budgets of local nonprofits," she said. She said they were able to maintain resources for housing and homelessness at about $1.5 million, but the Shelter Association did see a reduction. With limited resources, she said, tough funding decisions must be made. Schulmeister said the 27 beds being eliminated were temporary beds -- essentially pods with mattresses -- and they'll be placed into storage. "So, at any time, if the community feels that we need to re-add those 27 beds, we'd be able to do that," she said. Schulmeister said the 27 beds are on the service center floor on the second floor or the shelter. She said it made sense to use that floor for the temporary beds because there was space, but it did in some ways interfere with the shelter's warming center in the winter, and now that won't be the case.
"In the last couple years, we've had a Plan B for overflow to go to a church," she said. "We won't have to do that. We'll be able to handle it all inside the shelter because we'll use that space on the second floor for overflow." Schulmeister said that will save on costs since the shelter won't have to transport people to churches. The warming center next winter can start on the first floor as normal, and if needed it can expand to the second floor. Ann Arbor native Berda Green, who said she has been staying at the shelter for the past four weeks and is about to transition out, said she understands the reason for the cuts and she has only good things to say about the shelter. "This is a great place. They help a lot of people, especially the homeless," she said. "You know, they come from different states and different counties, because there's no housing and there's no shelters in other counties." People in the shelter's residential program are subject to drug tests.