The Art Store is planning to move after nearly 19 years at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and High Street.

On Jan. 5, Joe Domeier, The Art Store’s owner, and his business partner sold the store’s 18,000-square-foot building at 600 Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway to West Des Moines-based Freedom Financial Bank for an undisclosed sum. A parking lot adjacent to the store and a nearby house on High Street were also included in the sale.

Under terms of the agreement, May 31 will be the Art Store’s final day at its current location. Starting June 1, Freedom Financial will begin converting the building into a full-service banking office.

Domeier said selling the building allows him to pay off some debt and find a new building with more retail space. The current store has about 6,000 square feet devoted to retail, and he wants to expand that to at least 7,000 square feet at the new location.

“I’m literally bursting at the seams and need to expand,” Domeier said. “This is going to be a positive move for the retail environment.”

Domeier expects to sign a lease for a new location in the next couple of weeks. He has narrowed his search for a 13,000-square-foot building to the area between 42nd Street in Des Moines and Eighth Street in West Des Moines, bordered by University Avenue on the north and Railroad Avenue on the south.

“The hardest part right now is making a decision to stay within Des Moines,” Domeier said. “There aren’t many options for the size of building we need.”

Domeier said he doesn’t want to go “too west” and risk alienating his downtown customers and becoming “lost” among the plethora of strip malls near the major shopping centers.

“We are a destination-based business, and we want to be the landscape, not just a part of it,” Domeier said.

Being a destination retailer was the vision of the store’s founder, Ray Wolf, who started The Art Store in the Drake neighborhood in 1970. In 1999, Wolf sold the store to Domeier and a business partner from Minneapolis, Larry Brown. In 2004, Domeier bought Brown’s share of The Art Store business, but the two remained joint owners of the building through the time of its sale to Freedom Financial.

Domeier said his decision to buy out his partner’s share of the business in 2004 dramatically increased his debt. Although store revenues grew in 2005 and 2006, the buyout debt still loomed over Domeier. When a bidding war started last summer between Freedom Financial and another party, selling the building seemed like the logical thing to do.

“The final offer was literally too good to pass up,” Domeier said.

Domeier and his wife, Carol, who also works at the store, are looking forward to the additional flexibility they expect to have with the new location. Although they will have less overall space at a new store than at the current one, they expect to hire an additional full-time employee, with the possibility of a second in the near future.

“This gives us the opportunity to expand on what Ray Wolf did in the early years of the store and really make it our own,” Domeier said. “The previous ownership structure until now didn’t allow us to do that.”