Downtown Raleigh retailer Deco is moving – and that’s good news

Two independent shops in downtown Raleigh will be moving around the corner from their current location on Hargett Street to combine into one shop fronting on South Salisbury Street.

The gift shop Deco and its companion home furnishings store Deco Home will move into part of the former headquarters of the N.C. State Bar. Both businesses are owned by Pam Blondin, who opened Deco five years ago and Deco Home a year ago.

The shift will open up two storefronts on Hargett Street in the Odd Fellows Building, which is owned by Empire Properties, a major landowner downtown. Empire intends to lease the stores to retailers.

MDO Holdings, which recently purchased the old State Bar building, anticipates the ground-floor level of the Fayetteville Street side will be home to a retailer or restaurant. The company expects to announce a tenant in the next few weeks, spokesman Doug Warf said.

The new Deco space is scheduled to open early next spring. It is more than twice the size of the current Deco gift shop, making it the largest footprint for an independent retailer downtown, according to an announcement.

Andrew “Andy” Osterlund of Osterlund Architects is the architect for the project.

Details still being worked out, but Blondin said the new place will be more than twice the size of DECO not including Home.

“This is an excellent opportunity to grow Deco and, at the same time, to increase the number of locally owned retail storefronts on this important downtown corner,” Blondin said in the announcement.

Blondin has focused on that part of downtown through her stores and by paying for Raleigh’s first public “parklet,” in the 200 block of South Salisbury Street, and a sidewalk mural that won an award from the city.

After holding a clearance sale, Deco Home will close on Nov. 5 and host in that space a holiday pop-up shop by Raleigh Vintage, a Glenwood South business that is primarily an online retailer. Deco Home items will move into Deco until the entire shop relocates to its new location.

The deal was struck after Bill King, economic development director for the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, introduced Blondin to Michael Olander Jr., CEO of MDO Holdings.

“The corner of Hargett and Salisbury streets is becoming one of our strongest retail corridors with the expansion and success of Deco,” King said, noting the move helps fill a vacant building.

In September, MDO Holdings sold to Marbles Kids Museum a building that used to house the Longleaf School of the Arts charter high school on East Hargett Street. It will allow the museum to expand.

“We feel that shops and restaurants are vital to the vibrancy and overall livability of downtown Raleigh,” Olander, said in the announcement. “One of the things that attracted us to this landmark building is the opportunity to infuse energy onto two different streets.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2017 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Downtown Raleigh retailer Deco is moving – and that’s good news."