After 75 years in business on the southeast corner of 700 South and 300 West, Kim Kanell Nielsen and her father, Plato Kanell, are closing down their furniture store, which will be replaced with affordable housing.
“We’re ready to retire!” a banner outside the store reads.
The Salt Lake City business, which opened in 1948, has had a few names over the years — from Kanell’s TV Sales & Service and Kanell’s Furniture to the $99 Furniture Outlet. “As times change, we change,” Nielsen said.
Since 2013, it’s been Kanell’s Furniture Source, with Plato’s Pillows in the same building.
For decades, Kanell’s has been the place to find on-trend, high-quality furnishings at affordable prices. Since 2008, when Nielsen started managing the store, it’s had a funky yet tasteful mid-century modern vibe. Think bold patterns, bright colors, dining sets made with dark wood, and credenzas with tapered feet.
But the furniture that Kanell’s sold in the 1980s and ‘90s? “Oh my god, so horrible,” Nielsen said.
Now, Nielsen hopes to sell all of the merchandise on the store’s floor.
“There’s a lot of décor items and seasonal décor that might just need to be donated,” she wrote in an email. “Truthfully, I haven’t even gotten that far in the ‘retired’ mode.”
Trading a washing machine for a horse — and other ‘crazy stuff’
The name Kanell has been part of Utah history since 1918, when Plato Kanell’s father, George, and Plato’s uncle started a mercantile store in Bingham Canyon.
That year is what Plato refers to as the starting point for the Kanell family’s many business ventures in Utah.
When the family fell on hard times in Bingham Canyon, they planned to move to Kansas City. But their truck ended up breaking down in Salt Lake City, so they stayed put. George and Angelina Kanell, who were both Greek immigrants, started Kanell’s Grocery in 1922, just down the street from what is now Kanell’s Furniture Source.
In 1955, the Kanells were focused on selling TVs and appliances. Once, the family did a “72-hour blitz,” keeping the store open for 72 hours straight to sell appliances like Hotpoint and Maytag washing machines.
During the marathon, at about 2 a.m. one day, Plato Kanell got on the radio and said, “OK, the next person that brings a horse over here, we will trade you for a washer.”
“And the next thing they knew, a guy was pulling up with a horse in a trailer saying, ‘Where’s my washer?’” Nielsen said.
“They used to do crazy stuff like that,” she said.
Nielsen can list types of furniture over the years that have been popular for brief periods of time, like waterbeds, “hand” chairs and even vibrating hand chairs. She said that sofa and loveseat sets have fallen out of favor in recent years, as people buy sectionals instead.
But two types of furniture have been popular at Kanell’s throughout the decades, including banana chairs (also called video game chairs) and “poof pillows,” better known as “Plato’s pillows.”
“Not a bag … Not a sack … It’s a pillow!” So are Plato’s pillows described as cozy seats that stay airy due to their chopped-foam filling, rather than plastic beans.
Plato’s pillows aren’t made in the store anymore. But Plato Kanell used to make them by sucking chopped foam out of a bin with an old Kirby vacuum, then blowing the foam out of the vacuum and into the pillow.
Furniture bought at Kanell’s has staying power, Nielsen said. A customer recently came in and shared that he bought a custom sectional from Kanell’s for his family 30 years ago, and he’s now passing it down to his children.
“He let us know that the fabric that he chose 30 years ago is still in perfect condition, and the cushions have not lost their ‘cush’ in all these years,” Nielsen said in an email.
End of an era
Kanell’s is located in the burgeoning Granary District of Salt Lake City, sandwiched to the north and south by apartment complexes. And someday, the store will be replaced by apartments itself.
The Kanells sold the building to the Western States Nonprofit Housing Corporation in 2017, but CEO Marion Willey isn’t in a rush to begin redeveloping the site. He said the project won’t happen for two or three more years, as the Kanells slowly empty their store.
The plan is somewhat nebulous at the moment, but one thing’s for certain: “We’re going to call it Kanell’s Corner,” Willey said of the planned development, and likely put up a plaque honoring the Kanell family’s history.
Eventually, Willey intends to develop affordable housing and retail where Kanell’s Furniture Source and a couple of houses stand now. But “we’re not going to rush them,” he said. “They have as much time as they need.”
Until then, the Kanells are saying a long goodbye to their beloved business.
Robert Nielsen, one of Kim Kanell Nielsen’s sons, said he remembers playing in the back of the store as a child, stacking up poof pillows with his cousins and building forts out of the extra furniture. “Every once in a while we’d get in trouble,” he said,” but they always let us kind of mess around in the back.”
“We will worry for the passers-by who would wash windows or clean sidewalks or whatever for ‘a few bucks,’” Nielsen said. “Mostly, we will miss everyone from all the years who stop by to visit with ‘Ol’ Kanell’ while in the old neighborhood.”
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