Three stores, Kohl’s, TJ Maxx and Shoe Carnival are all set to open within the next month.

Kohl’s will be opening March 3, TJ Maxx on March 6 and Shoe Carnival on March 16. The new retail stores are owned by GK Property Management.

GK Principle Developer, Greg Kveton, has high hopes for the stores; he believes they will fare better than the Sear’s before them.

“Sear’s was really a partial store, a small store for them. Kohl’s is putting in a brand new prototype, as are TJ Maxx and Shoe Carnival,” Kveton stated.

“Ames is a good market. We believe that those guys will do very well. It’s a strong residential area where the mall is and there’s a need for retail there. This area here is a dominant retail area in town now. We think they’re going to do very well in these locations.”

Some don’t see the new businesses as a threat whatsoever to already existing retail stores, but believe this will help all retail stores in the Ames area.

Breanna Fosmire, junior in interdisciplinary studies and employee at Maurice’s, is excited about the change.

“I’m really excited for it. It’s going to bring a lot more traffic to the mall instead of people just passing up Ames and going to Ankeny or Des Moines,” Fosmire said.

As far as construction and development have been going, Kveton also stated there haven’t been any major problems and they’re on schedule.

“We haven’t had any problems with the winter and things have pretty much gone as planned. We completed the site work last November; that was the outside work.

The inside work on the buildings where the Shoe Carnival and TJ Maxx will be [were] pretty much [completed by] the first of December,” Kveton explained. “We’ve been working on the building between the Kohl’s and Sear’s — that’s a new building.”

Tenants for the building will also be announced within two months, there is a tenant in mind, but due to confidentiality, they cannot release who.

Besides this new building, GK Development also has their sights on doing construction on a new building on 24th Street, which is a multi-tenant retail building, so there is a good chance of more retail stores opening in the not so distant future.

With the three new stores opening soon, TJ Maxx has already started new employee training. Senaida Sehie, assistant manager from the Jordan Creek store, said they are also projected to open on time.

TJ Maxx has been training approximately 76 new employees, to prepare them for the grand opening.

Sehie stated there aren’t any special promotions or deals as of now for the opening of the store, and doesn’t know how well they’ll do in Ames.

The stores will be celebrating their openings with a fireworks display at 6:30 p.m. March 7. As of now, there is not a specified area where the fireworks will be launched.