The first stir of activity since November was seen Friday at the Harbach building at 1104 Second St. and 1208 Willis Ave., gateway to the downtown retail corridor, where concrete footings were poured.
Jacqueline Riekena of West Des Moines, owner of the property, told ThePerryNews.com Friday that supply-chain bottlenecks have retarded progress in renovating the commercial space. She said that new doors for the facility were ordered at the end of November and might be on site by mid-March.
“Supplies are really delayed,” Riekena said. “It’s three to four months when custom ordered, and I think it is going to get worse.”
The pace of progress should pick up in the spring, the property developer said.
“Either way, we have to get concrete poured before new door openings can go in,” she said. “These doors will replace the 75-year-old cracked and outdated ones and will match the windows. These have to go in before we can add siding, which we are hoping to do by May.”
Demolition work on the 11,000-square-foot Harbach building began in November 2016, and the original windows were removed in November 2019, after which progress stalled on the 75-year-old building.
Riekena bought the building in 2016 for $135,000 from Rob Wenger of Perry, who acquired the property in 1995 from the bankruptcy estate of the Spurgeon Holding Corp. The site of the original Clements Block and later the Carter Block, the Harbach building has in more recent years been the home of Conklin Jewelers, Woolworth’s variety store, Spurgeon’s clothing store and the El Rey Market.
