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It plans to begin construction next spring on the expansion, which will bring the size of the facility to 53,000 square feet in October 2005.

“We have experienced significant growth in the last five years with the addition of stores and expansion of our catalog business,” said Mike Gugel, president. “This expansion is overdue.”

United Art operated the distribution center at the location of its Clinton Street store until 1991, when it relocated its headquarters to Airport Expressway.

The company employs about 180 at its distribution center, headquarters and seven stores. United Art expects to create an additional 25 distribution center jobs by the end of the decade.

The company was founded as a catalog business in 1960; the Clinton location was its first store. It took the concept to Indianapolis in 1995 and opened a second store there two years later.

In 2001, it opened stores in suburbs of Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, and the following year acquired a similar business with stores in Goshen and Mishawaka.

The mail-order division, which only sent catalogs to Indiana, Ohio and Michigan schools in 1991, now sends them to all schools east of the Rocky Mountains.

“About this time last year we opened our online store, and that’s been steadily growing,” Gugel said. “The way that we’ve marketed it so far has been to schools, but anybody can buy from it.”

The catalogs have been skewed toward art supplies, but the company plans to do more Internet marketing, he said.

Fort Wayne will provide a $40,000 grant to assist with the company’s expansion. Gugel said the Fort Wayne-Allen County Economic Development Alliance “helped with the red tape” and provided contacts for the project.

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