the downtown Younkers department store closed in August, Krista Capp, vice president of property management for Hubbell Realty Co., admits, “we were really worried.”

But in the past six months, Hubbell Realty, which manages the Kaleidoscope at the Hub, has found the outcome to be quite the opposite.

“It’s been a boon for us,” Capp said. “We have definitely seen an increase in traffic.”

And the numbers show it. The Kaleidoscope, which Capp said has hovered in the 70 to 80 percent occupancy range since opening in 1985, is now fully leased. Foot traffic has increased, cash registers are ringing and new stores are opening. The newest, Abante at the Hub, opens its doors Monday.

“We’re excited to be downtown,” said Charles Greth, area manager for Abante Contemporary Furnishings. Abante at the Hub will be its third store in Greater Des Moines. “We hope to bring a lot of people through and hope to gain from who is already down there.”

In April 2005, the downtown mall was about 89 to 90 percent occupied, leaving about 9,000 square feet of unleased retail space. Hubbell has been working diligently over the past year to lease that vacant space, Capp said, and has done so through the addition of several new businesses.

The Stadium, FANtastic Apparel and More, an athletic apparel store, opened on the skywalk level of the Kaleidoscope in November with merchandise bearing the logos of collegiate and professional teams. Shoppers and passers-by can check scores on a number of televisions inside and outside the 3,000-square-foot store.

Whylie Eye Care and The Marketplace opened this fall, and the owners of the Midtown Art Café added their second Greater Des Moines location in January when they opened in the Kaleidoscope’s food court. David Starlin, owner of Rocs, recently added his second skywalk store, Etc., which sells home furnishings.

“We have diverse offerings, which increases the traffic flow,” Capp said. Downtown workers, she said, have the ability to drop off their dry cleaning in the morning and pick up a bite to eat for breakfast, then return for lunch at the food court and a haircut and breeze through on the way home to pick up their dry cleaning and grab a last-minute card or gift.

Capp expects the long-term effect of Younkers’ departure to be nominal, especially with the expected addition of about 600 new downtown housing units by the end of the year and continued growth in the number of downtown workers.

“We’ve got a really solid base and we offer really good products,” she said.

Greth said serious discussion of a Kaleidoscope store for Abante began about two months ago after ongoing discussions about a downtown store. “We had discussed having a downtown location somewhere,” he said, “but it wasn’t positively the Kaleidoscope.”

He and the store’s owners, Bill and Terrill Johnson, expect Abante to be part of the “renaissance” going on in downtown Des Moines, and hope to benefit from a growing number of downtown residents. “We feel like we’re kind of a natural fit for the metropolitan type of consumer,” Greth said.

Abante at the Hub, like its Clive store, will function as a design studio with access to about 300 vendors and an in-store interior designer. The 1,500-square-foot showroom will be about 10 percent of the size of its Clive store. But you can’t underestimate the power of tens of thousands of downtown workers winding through the Kaleidoscope on a daily basis, Greth noted.

“One thing we liked is the amount of foot traffic that comes through the Kaleidoscope,” he said. “And I think our name is out there enough that we’ll create some immediate foot traffic.”

Hubbell is working on a comprehensive upgrade to the downtown mall that includes updated lighting, tile and color schemes, Capp said. In addition, the company constantly monitors traffic flow through the Kaleidoscope. “As we see that increase, we can alter our hours,” she said.