Ok, I have to admit it, I have a real weakness for ice cream and fresh made fudge. When I lived in Sarasota, Florida, one of my favorite places to visit at St. Armand’s Circle, was Kilwin’s Chocolates & Ice Cream. Without fail, there was always a line to get into this place, and on some busy weekend nights, that’s a good 15 to 20 minute wait, but well worth it.

Opportunity: Kilwins Chocolates & Ice Cream

Business Case: I don’t think I’m unique in there’s nothing better than a good cup of ice cream. Kilwins has some outstanding flavors and if ice cream isn’t your thing, then there’s always the homemade fudge and other candies that you can watch them make right there in the store.

Kilwin’s started in northern Michigan in 1947, and has earned a reputation for its quality products and excellent service. They use only the finest and freshest ingredients and they franchise currently has over 50 locations throughout the US. Now it’s time for Des Moines residents to try some of these great treats. Trust me, you will find yourself coming back again and again. Downtown has no other ice cream venues, so competition is next to none.

Suggested location: The East Village, preferably somewhere on Locust Street. This would grab the local residents, State Office works, and those eating or shopping in the Village. Kilwins are generally located in a walking district where you can grab some ice cream and window shop other retail outlets around. In both Sarasota and Ft Lauderdale, the stores are always busy especially on summer weekend evenings.

A recent article on The Big Money, by Jonathan Weber, discusses growth across the country moves away from suburban and exurban fringe and toward center-cities and close-in suburbs.

Here are few excerpts from the article that caught my attention:

What’s behind this shift? Empty-nesters don’t need the big house and don’t want to mow the big lawn. High gas prices are making long commutes less practical. The urban renaissance in big cities…and the revival of charming, vibrant downtowns in small cities…is making the bedroom suburb and the strip mall seem positively dull.

Retailers are the most obviously affected by these trends. For decades, locating a store in a mall on the fringe rather than downtown had a lot of obvious advantages: plenty of easy parking, tons of drive-by traffic from big-box neighbors, and newer buildings with better infrastructure.

These benefits won’t disappear overnight. Over the long run, though, they will diminish in importance, especially if more big retail chains and shopping-mall operators go out of business. Downtown shopping districts, meanwhile, will benefit from increased investment and more proximate residents. If we assume, as many economists do, that the country is “over-retailed,” some downtown development plans based on more shopping will stall, but the center will still prosper relative to the fringe — and more businesses might find the downtown storefront affordable.

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Now that the Des Moines Building is up for sale again, here’s what I think some philanthropist should do with that building and for the children of Des Moines.

Opportunity: The Des Moines Sports & Education Complex

Business Case: Thanks to the Pappajohns we now have great free art for our residents to appreciate and learn from. Now if we can find another donor that would like to give back to the community in a different way. Truth be told, I’m not much of a sports fan, never have been, probably from growing up in a family that obsessed too much about sports, but having living here in Des Monies for a little over six years now, I could see what I’m about to describe as totally possible.

Resident here love sports and getting their kids involved in sports programs of all types. This business opportunity would be mostly a not-for-profit enterprise, but there would be an associated for-profit business to work into the place. So here’s how this would work.

The overall building would need to be renovated to make this vision work. The bottom floor of the building would feature a a lobby that is decorated in sports memorabilia and sports photography of local teams, both community teams and local school teams. Off of the lobby would be an entrance into a for-profit business which would be your typical sports bar with all of the plasma TVs hanging from the walls and ceilings but instead of them being tuned into national or college sports, they would be tuned into local community sporting events, for example high school basketball or football events. During non-live coverage of local sporting events, there would be previously recorded games running or sports education films, or events featuring home-town heros, such as Shawn Johnson. The restaurant would feature your standard sports bar fare, such as burgers, chicken wings, salads, etc. There would be definitely family spin to the restaurant.

On the other side of the lobby would be smoothie bar and health cafe. This area would feature pre and post training and work out shakes and meal replacement snacks. From the lobby, visitors would take elevators or stairs up to the desired floor based on the sports their children would be taking. For example, there would be a floor or area dedicated to the following sports-related activities: basketball area would feature a gymnasium-style area where youth could learn to place basketball and participate in team practices; wrestling area; gymnastics area – named after Shawn Johnson; actually each area could be named after a significant hometown hero in that sporting event; indoor track and field; ballet area – area set up learning ballet; boxing area; kick-boxing area; karate and other martial arts. You get the idea, just imagine a 14 story building filled full of sports areas.

So the way this would work is that youth ages 5 to 18 that live in the 50309 zip code would be able to sign-up for and attend any sports training free of charge. For youth outside of 50309, they would be able to buy a yearly membership for each child that would let them learn as many sports as they want to sign-up for. Membership dues would be on sliding scale based on their parents income.

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For the next installment of a business opportunity, is something that we used to have in Tampa, Florida when I lived in that area.

Opportunity: The Des Moines Dessert Room

Business Case: Have you ever wanted to take someone special out, not for a full dinner, but maybe just a real nice dessert? The Des Moines Dessert Room would be smaller-sized restaurant that only served incredibly delicious and gorgeous looking desserts and great martinis. The restaurant would be open three nights a week, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings from 7pm to 2am. Restaurant could be available for private parties on other days.

Décor would consist of upscale urban design, with most tables being a two toppers, and a few tables as four toppers; and eight toppers. After a short while, when the word gets out, on how great of place this is to take your significant other to or a few of your closest friends to for a special occasion, reservations would go from being suggested to being required. In Tampa, sometimes you had to reserve two-weeks in advance just to get a table.

Dessert selections would consist of: Tiramisu, Bananas Foster, Chocolate-Bourbon Cake, Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries, Bublanina (a Czechoslovakian dessert, is made with whatever fruit is most plentiful at the time), Chocolate-Espresso Tore with Raspberry Sauce, Thin French Apple Tart with Vanilla-Bean Ice Cream and Miniature-Size Wedding Cakes.

Suggested Location: To make this place even more special, I would love to see this on one of the upper-floors or top-floors of one of the downtown buildings so that diners would have spectacular nighttime views which would just add to the ambiance. If we couldn’t get that, maybe the East Village or Western Gateway Park area would make a great setting.

I believe if this next business opportunity could be pulled off, there could a huge impact on other downtown retailers and restaurants.

Opportunity: Kaleidoscope Factory Outlet Mall

Business Case: We’ve all seen the endless vacancies of this “downtown mall” for the past several years. It’s a tough economy and people are looking for bargains. Here’s the solution I pose to turn not only this mall around but bring a ton of business to nearby restaurants, including the food courts and other retail shops. Hubbell should go after and try to attract some factory stores that you find in outlet centers such as Banana Republic Factory Store, Nike Factory Store, Gap Factory Outlet, Kenneth Cole, Coach Outlet, etc. These types of stores always draw a good business regardless of the economy due to their great prices.

Since moving here six years ago, I still don’t understand why a city the size of Des Moines doesn’t have an outlet mall, sure we have 4 regular malls, but no outlet mall. If someone wants to travel to an outlet mall they have to drive a good two hours for just a small outlet center, but Des Moines residents have been taking their local money and spending it out of town. My favorite outlet mall is Chicago Premium Outlets in Aurora.

These stores would be busy weekdays during the lunch hours while downtown workers shopped on their lunch breaks and people would come in during the evenings and weekends to shop. No longer would you hear the phrase I hate most “the skywalks killed retail sales” and from downtown residents and visitors “why is everything closed at 5pm weekdays and closed on the weekends?” Can you imagine the food court open at 8pm on Tuesday or 5pm on a Sunday? Wow!

Suggested Location: The Kaleidoscope Mall should be the hub of the outlet center, but I could see this spilling over to near by empty spaces such as the Bank of America retail space on the first floor and the 1st and 2nd floor retail space of the Younkers Building. Why not?

The next business opportunity we will be discussing is a retail establishment to serve the large young male population that works downtown, as well as downtown and metro residents.

Opportunity:XY – Urban Male Essentials

Business Case: With over 75,000 people working downtown, and guestimating that 1/2 of them are male, and 90% are between the ages of 21 and 40, there’s a huge audience that could be served with a downtown store that caters to the young urban male.

The retail store would be more than a typical clothing store, it would focus on its demographic by offering them a great selection of hip clothing and accessories. For example, if you want to buy, say a pair of Diesel jeans, the only place you have to shop in the area is Von Maur, but try to find clothing by Andrew Christian, 7 for All Men, Armani, Citzens of Humanity, Rock & Republic, etc. You just can’t find that here, since we don’t even have a Bloomingdales or Macy’s.

In addition to demin, XY would carry a variety of men’s polo shirts and t-shirts. Also the store would carry a huge selection of men’s underwear from brands like: Just Us Boys, Papi, C-N2, Baskit, and Ginch Gonch. In the accessories department the store would have a good selection of belt buckles, belts, watches, bracelets, necklaces and rings. Shoppers would find men’s casual shoes such as Creative Reaction, D&G, Ed Hardley, Puma Sport, Steve Madden and Lacoste.

Other urban male essentials would include a collection of leather and canvas messenger bags and an assortment of DJ Mix and Circuit Party CDs.

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The next business opportunity we will be discussing is something is more in line with a retail business than the previous two restaurant opportunities. The proposal is a large design center. From my experience these tend to become destination spots and bring with them a lot of traffic and some tourism.

Opportunity: Des Moines Metro Design Center

Business Case: If you’ve ever wanted to find some real contemporary hardware for your new condo or home; maybe some interesting lighting choices and apartment size furniture. You currently either have to drive out of town to either Chicago or Minneapolis or order online. Order online is fine, but you can’t really touch and feel or see how the item would look in its environment. We have a few lighting places in the metro but they don’t offer a huge selection of contemporary lighting. If you are looking for cabinet/door hardware you are limited to the big box stores and their limited choices. And I could go on. If we had a design center, this would not be the case.

Let me try and explain my vision on this one (and it’s not as easy to explain as I see it in my head). You would have one location that would be divided up into spaces and each space would feature a huge selection of contemporary items in their respective categories. There would also be modularized mini-showrooms that would be set up that would show a finished room using some of these items (such as a kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, etc.). Then finally there would be designers and vendors that had a presence (i.e. small office) in the design center. More about that in a moment.

The design center would include: a lighting showroom; a hardware showroom; a bathroom fixture showroom; a kitchen cabinets and fixture showroom; and a furniture showroom featuring contemporary pieces in smaller footprints, perfect for a downtown condo or loft.

In addition to these showrooms mentioned above local vendors would build small modular rooms on site displaying their tile work, carpeting, hardware, etc. in completed room vignettes. For example depending on space, you could have 3 to 5 contemporary kitchens set up, 3 to 5 contemporary bathrooms etc. With the vignettes being built on mobile platforms, they could be rotated in and out of a joining warehouse space.

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The next business opportunity we will be discussing is another restaurant idea. I know, some people say we already have plenty of restaurants downtown, but I’ve never found anything like this here downtown or even in the Des Moines metro area. Having moved here from South Florida, one of the most popular food items there was grilled chicken. There were numerous chains that specialized in grilled chicken, but one of my favorites was the franchise called Chicken Kitchen.

Opportunity: Chicken Kitchen franchise

Business Case: One of the healthiest meals you can eat is grilled chicken and there isn’t really anywhere to get this style of food currently in Des Moines. Chicken Kitchen offers a menu featuring freshly marinated grilled chicken entrees, fresh salads and homemade side orders. Chicken Kitchen is renowned for its focus on high quality, nutritious, made-from-scratch fresh food, with a strong emphasis on taste and recipes that adhere to the strict guidelines established by the American Hearth Association, with regard to fat, calories and cholesterol.

They offer a multitude of chicken entrées, ranging from chicken on the bone, skinless boneless breast platters, Pita-Pockettes™ and Panini Grillers™ artisan sandwiches to the now World-Famous “Chop-Chop™” – freshly marinated chopped boneless breast of chicken topping a bowl of rice and mixed with various ingredients and a choice of our Signature Sauces™, such as the Mustard’nCurry.

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As someone who has lived downtown for a little over a year now and being a transplant into the metro area for 6 years now from South Florida, I have often thought of missed business opportunities downtown, at least as I see it. With that in mind, I plan on writing a series of posts over the next several weeks or months that showcases what I believe are missed business opportunities that just need the right investors/capital to become a reality. With this being the first post in the series, I will focus on what I believe would be the best business opportunity for a downtown business.

Opportunity: The 24-Hour Diner

Business Case: Even just last weekend, I heard a skywalk cop tell a family with 3 small children that everything was closed after 5pm unless you they wanted an upscale place, where there children wouldn’t care to be, or a sports bar/pub. You don’t have a lot of other choices without traveling out to the burbs he said. I’ve also seen the late night/after bar closing crowd have to get in their cars and venture out on I-235 to either Euclid or 22nd/86th St to find a Perkins that is open 24/7 for late night breakfast or dinner.

In my opinion, either a mom-n-pop diner or a chain like Perkins or IHOP would do well downtown. Their food is inexpensive, quick and pretty good quality. The busiest times for the diner would be between midnight and 3am with the bar crowds, and Saturday/Sunday morning with the late breakfast brunch crowds, but if in the right location, they would be able to benefit from the 75,000+ work crowd during lunch Monday through Friday. Suggested menu would be 24-hour breakfast availability, and an assortment of standard restaurant fare such as burgers and sandwiches, with pricing in line with chains like Perkins or IHOP. For it to work, price, quality and service and location would all need to be serious considered.

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