Pondering the Future of Mattress Firm at State/Roosevelt

Shopping for a mattress always seemed like a strange experience to us.  Additionally, it often seems that mattress stores rarely have an abundance of shoppers inside.  Couple those points with the ease and emerging popularity of online mattress shopping and it's easy why Mattress Firm has filed for Bankruptcy (via Chicago Tribune):

Even Mattress Firm now acknowledges that a particular street on Chicago’s North Side has more than enough spots to buy a mattress.

The Houston-based retailer, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week, plans to close 209 stores nationwide by the end of the month, including 29 of its 211 locations in Illinois. Two of the stores on the closure list are on neighboring blocks of North Clybourn Avenue near Cortland Street, according to bankruptcy court records. The company has two other stores still in operation on Clybourn between Cortland and Wrightwood Avenue.

Eventually, Mattress Firm plans to close as many as 700 of its roughly 3,400 stores, focusing on those in areas where it has too many locations that are too close together, CEO Steve Stanger said Friday in a statement on the company website.

So why are we writing about this?  We've always been fascinated as to the location of a Mattress Firm at the corner of State and Roosevelt (see picture above).  This was a dry cleaner then converted into a Bedding Experts which was later bought out by Mattress Firm.  This location rarely seems busy and in our opinion would be much better served as a restaurant/coffee type of business (although loitering seems to be a problem here and at the Starbucks).

While this location won't be closed initially, maybe it will be in future closings as part of this bankruptcy restructuring?  One can hope...