One Valley West Mall store is ensuring that it won’t be forgotten as a flurry of new retail outlets opening this fall to the west. Calypso 968, which specializes in eclectic home furnishings and gifts, is creating a buzz as it claims a larger space in the shopping center.

Karen Seifert, co-owner of Calypso 968, said construction will start in July on a new 6,200-square-foot store across from its current location on the upper level. She expects the four stores now occupying the space – Games by James, The Bead Garden, After Hours Formal Wear and Valley West Pub – to move out in July to allow the store to open its new location sometime in September.

Seifert said what “sealed the deal” for her and co-owner Melodie Barkley is that Calypso 968 will have its own mall entrance for customers, windows and signs visible from the parking lot. “We wouldn’t have had that (mall entrance) anywhere,” Barkley said.

Seifert and Barkley both said they didn’t plan this expansion right now, just six months after they opened their Chicago store. Seifert also expected to evaluate the effect Jordan Creek Town Center would have on Valley West before making any big move. But the offer made by Valley West ended up being too good to pass up, she said.

“We were invited to join Jordan Creek, but we have a good customer base here by Von Maur and Banana Republic,” Seifert said. “Valley West is a great mall to work with because they’re family-owned and friendly. From the time we brought our idea to them five years ago, they’ve been in our corner.”

Trisha Barton, director of marketing for Valley West Mall, said Calypso 968’s expressed desire to expand meshed well with the mall’s ideas to remodel the existing pub and each of the mall entrances. Those factors made it a good time to make an offer to Calypso 968, an important tenant to the mall because of its uniqueness and its ability to draw in out-of-state customers through advertising.

“We do everything we can to help our stores to succeed, but we are especially excited about working with the unique stores like Calypso,” Barton said. “This is their only Iowa location, and the great amount of outside advertising they do helps us all by bringing people who have seen their ads in the tourist magazines.”

Calypso 968’s new store will allow the owners to showcase more products through a store design that better suits the inventory, Barkley said.

“Right now, our store is long and skinny, like a tunnel,” she said. “It’s hard to get an idea of all that we have in here. Our new store will be long and fat, with more frontage space, so customers will constantly be able to see what’s on our walls and what we have.”

The two owners plan to add more furniture, bars and entertainment centers for the customers to choose from – large-scale items that would not have fit into their original store. Also, Seifert plans to create a gathering space in which customers can relax, a need she hasn’t been able to address until now.

“We’ll have a place where we can have outside seating if we like,” she said. “We’re also probably going to be serving some desserts in the bar area of the store, so we’ll be selling products and also have a good place to meet.”

As plans start to take shape for Calypso 968, Seifert and Barkley say they feel that staying at Valley West was the right choice for them, even though they toyed with the idea of opening at Jordan Creek. However, they were under contract with Valley West for three more years, meaning that any presence at Jordan Creek would have been in addition to the two stores they already had.

“We would have had two stores open (in West Des Moines) at the same time for the first three years,” Barkley said. “We know from the Chicago opening that it takes a lot to stock a store the size of 6,000 square feet. For us to have opened up another store and stocked it, we would have spent thousands of dollars, and we would have been competing against ourselves.”

Seifert said she feels it’s smarter to keep Calypso 968 at two stores for the time being. “We’ve seen so many chains come and go, and the main reason they go under is because they’ve lost control and grown too quickly,” she said. “I won’t be one of those.”

Displaced stores find new spots

The futures of two of the four stores affected by Calypso 968’s move, After Hours Formal Wear and Games by James, are still being decided, according to the stores’ managers, although both anticipate moving to Jordan Creek Town Center. The Valley West Pub will reopen in a new location within the mall. The Bead Garden, now known as Eyebead Gemstones, will be pulling out of the mall to concentrate on its new Valley Junction store, which opened this spring.

Tim Rose, assistant manager of the Games by James store at Valley West, said moving to a new location had been under consideration for some time. Originally, the plan was to move to a bigger space in Valley West, he said, but Jordan Creek’s proposal caught the attention of management.

“We would have been moving at some point anyway, even if Calypso hadn’t decided to move,” Rose said. “We have literally outgrown our space. This just pushed us a little faster.”

Greg Gernes, regional operations manager for Games by James, said he is “about 99 percent sure” that the chain’s only Iowa store will be moving into Jordan Creek Town Center.

“The list of names of mall tenants (at Jordan Creek) was really the deciding factor for us,” Gernes said. “They told us that most of the stores on that list are really close to signing, and six months ago, that wasn’t the case. If the malls were further apart from each other, it wouldn’t have been a tough decision.”

Brian Law, the acting manager of After Hours Formal Wear, said, “There’s a good chance that we’ll be moving out of Valley West.” Although the decision is not in his hands, he said his district and regional managers appear to be looking at Jordan Creek’s available spaces.

“We have to consider the mileage radius,” Law said. “We might be here temporarily (in a vacant spot) until the final decision is made, and we will be contacting our current customers to keep them updated on where to find us.”

The Valley West Pub will move to a new location in the southeast corner of the upper level of the mall, across from the Serenity Salon, according to manager Ben Stanbrough, who says he is excited about the move and the opportunities the restaurant will have as a result.

“It sounds like we’ll be in a bigger place and a nicer place,” Stanbrough said. “We’ll have outdoor access and windows, too.”

Barton said the pub will be new and improved, as well as more “family friendly.”

“You’re going to see a totally new grill, from floor to ceiling,” she said. “It’s all going to be redone with new equipment and a non-smoking area for families.”

Barton said she sees lots of positive things at Valley West right now that will help it retain shoppers during times of increased competition. New permanent tenants such as ArtHouse, Flash! Digital Portraits Studio and Girls Stuff (a clothing boutique) show the mall’s growth and ability to attract unique tenants, she said. The shopping center currently has five or six vacant spaces – some of which it is in negotiations to fill – which she doesn’t find unusual.

“The atmosphere of the mall has changed so much in the past year, thanks to our renovations and new tenants,” Barton said. “When you make a good place to shop even better, people will spend more time here.”