Kapnick Insurance Group is set to open its new Ann Arbor office Monday after finishing renovations on the former La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery building near Briarwood Mall.

Kapnick, which merged with Ufer & Co. Insurance more than two years ago, is moving to the building at 1201 Briarwood Circle after purchasing the property in July 2010, about a year after the furniture store closed.

Converting the 18,424-square-foot store into an office building involved installing new large exterior windows, offices, a remodeled facade and painting, said Jim Kapnick, president of Kapnick Insurance Group.

“The nice thing about this building is that it was just open as a retail store,” Jim Kapnick said. “There were no walls or anything, so it allowed us to go in here and configure it however we wanted, making it relatively easy to remodel.”

After merging with Ann Arbor-based Ufer & Co. Insurance in 2009, Kapnick had been looking to consolidate its two offices. Kapnick, which has corporate headquarters in Adrian, currently operates its Ann Arbor office at a leased space on Victors Way. The Ufer & Co. building is located on East Stadium Boulevard.

Tom Ufer of Ufer & Co. said that with good visibility and traffic in the Briarwood area, the vacant La-Z-Boy Furniture building presented the agency with the perfect opportunity to merge the two offices into one location.

“There is wonderful exposure on the Briarwood side and also the I-94 side,” Tom Ufer said. “And we’re cleaning up what had become an eyesore since it was vacant.”

Although the owners declined to name the purchase price of the building, Mike Kapnick of the Kapnick Insurance Group said they purchased the building at a “very affordable level.”

The building was sold in 2006 for $3.3 million to an entity controlled by La-Z-Boy, according to city records. Its state equalized value was $700,000 in 2010, down from $1.28 million in 2008, the last full year it was operating as a furniture store.

The move for Kapnick comes as the insurance agency is seeing growth in the Ann Arbor market, said Jim Kapnick.

“This year, about 80 percent of our new client acquisitions come from the Washtenaw County area, so virtually almost all of our new business growth is coming from right here,” he said.

With a growing client base and a larger office space, Jim Kapnick said the company has already hired several new employees this year, and might hire more in the near future.

“We have 30 employees immediately for this location,” Jim Kapnick said. “But we definitely have room to grow in here. We’ve got capacity for probably 60 employees.”

The insurance agency employs about 115 people between its offices in Adrian, Southfield and Ann Arbor.

And with a more visible location near Briarwood, Jim Kapnick said he hopes that the company can continue to grow and become an integral part of the Ann Arbor community.

“In our other office, we were tucked away on Victors Way, but we want the community to know that we’re here, we’re a part of the community and here to stay,” said Jim Kapnick. “And we definitely want to keep growing.”

Lizzy Alfs is a business reporter for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at 734-623-2584 or email her at lizzyalfs@annarbor.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lizzyalfs.