Comment on Smulekoff’s Home Store prepares for its final days

CEDAR RAPIDS — This Friday, Smulekoff’s Home Store will open its doors for the last time. The furniture store, which has been part of the downtown fabric for 125 years, will close. For months, big yellow and red signs advertising its final days have hung on windows and doors.Furniture has been marked down, and then marked down again as the store has sold off its inventory — moving from five floors of furniture down to one and a half by the middle of November.“Every time I empty a room, employees get sad,” said Allan Barbeln, president of Innovative Advertising Inc., a furniture store consulting company.