PEOSTA, Iowa — A locally owned hardware store with an established presence in Dubuque soon will expand into Peosta.
Sara Carpenter, co-owner of Steve’s Ace, said the home and garden business aims to open a location at the southeast corner of Peosta Street and Burds Road in early 2022.
“We hope to start breaking ground next week, and the goal is to open in the late winter,” she said. “This has been a long time coming.”
The Peosta location will be the third to operate under the Steve’s Ace name. The family business, which Sara owns with her husband, Jason, has operated in the area since 1988. The business currently has Dubuque locations at 200 S. Locust St. and 3350 John F. Kennedy Road.
Carpenter believes that the new location will bring an added level of convenience for customers who live west of Dubuque and currently travel long distances to get to the JFK store.
The business has been considering a Peosta location for more than five years.
“We started exploring this all the way back in 2015 but determined (in previous years) that we just weren’t ready to pull the trigger,” Carpenter said. “It seems like now is the right time to do it, with the residential growth and other business developments in the area.”
The new location will span 15,500 square feet and employ 15 to 20 workers.
Carpenter said the Peosta store will be a “curated combination” of the two existing stores operated by Steve’s Ace.
It will feature a full hardware store, “outdoor lifestyle” items ranging from patio furniture to grills, a gift department and an outdoor garden center with annuals, perennials and seasonal plants.
Shifting consumer patterns further fortified the owners’ belief that the timing was right for growth.
Carpenter believes the new store is coming along at a time when people are investing more time and money into their homes.
“As a whole, our industry is booming,” she said. “Instead of taking that vacation, people have been focused on improving their home and making that more of a sanctuary.”
News of the new business was met with enthusiasm from city officials.
“We’re really excited about it,” said Peosta City Council Member John Kraft. “It adds an amenity that we don’t really have at this point, and it’s another step forward for the community.”
Kraft believes the Steve’s Ace location offers further evidence that the city is “building up momentum,” adding that each new development increases the likelihood of more positive news in the community.
“We’ve had a lot of positive things happening in the last two to three years with businesses and amenities coming to the community,” he said. “In the next few years, I think the future is even brighter and we will see a lot of neat things happening.”