Naples' Hoffmann buys Schnarr's Hardware's suburban St. Louis property

The Hoffmann Family of Cos. is at it again.

The Naples and Chicago area firm has bought the property of a longstanding hardware store in Missouri.

The property, at 9800 Clayton Road in the suburban St. Louis town of Ladue, is home to Schnarr’s Hardware, a retailer doing business in the area for more than 60 years.

Hoffmann, which bought the property through its subsidiary Hoffmann Commercial Real Estate, did not disclose a sales price and St. Louis County property records had not been updated as of Sep. 27.

The building is 8,600 square feet and sits on 0.37 acres, according to property records. It was built in 1969.

A Hoffmann spokesperson say there are no plans for Schnarr’s to move and that the building “will remain the hardware store.”

The Schnarr family, according to a history on its website, started the business repairing wagons and Model T cars, as well as sharpening reel lawn mowers. It eventually started a market delivering groceries but turned it into a hardware store in 1960.

The current owner is Frank P. Blair who bought it from W.A. (Bill) Schnarr in 1995.

Schnarr’s currently operates two stores in the area.

This is just the latest buy for Hoffmann, which has roots in Missouri, in suburban St. Louis. The firm announced earlier this month that it was under contract to buy a 600,000-square-foot downtown Clayton office tower. It also owns two other nearby office buildings. One of those, at 8000 Maryland Ave. in Clayton, is named The Hoffmann Building.

The family-run conglomerate currently owns more than 100 global brands and employs 11,000 people with businesses in 30 countries and 400 locations worldwide. That includes 40 business in Southwest Florida with at least 2,000 employees. That portfolio includes the Hertz Arena, Naples Princess Cruises and The Old Collier Golf Club.

Earlier this year it bought Oberweis Dairy, a 97-year-old Illinois company that operates a dairy home delivery service across parts of the Midwest and Texas, a chain of corporate- and franchise-owned dairy and ice cream stores in the Chicago area, a distribution service to regional supermarkets and high-end fast-food hamburger restaurants named the Burger Joint.

Not long after buying the dairy operation in a bankruptcy auction for $21.25 million, it picked up Sip n’ Sail, a cruise operator on Mackinac Island in Michigan.