Sam’s Club opens in Ankeny

A new Sam’s Club store opened May 21 at 4625 S.E. Delaware Ave. in Ankeny south of Fleet Farm. The store is 139,000 square feet, will include a gas station and sits on 19.7 acres in the growing retail area. It is the second Sam’s Club location in the metro, with the first located at 1101 73rd St. in Windsor Heights and slightly smaller. Sam’s Club is a membership-only warehouse chain owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The Ankeny store is open 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday. Business and premium member hours begin at 8 a.m. during the week. Call 559-1747 or visit www.samsclub.com.

New World Café plans to close

The New World Café opened in November of 2012 and announced that it will close this summer. The East Village vegan restaurant is located at 223 Walnut St. and is owned by Adam Senecaut and Madeline Krantz, who is also the chef. New World Café will keep its regular hours for its duration, with the exception that there will be no dinner service on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Friday and Saturday dinner will continue. Regular hours are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5-8 p.m., Friday; and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5-8 p.m., Saturday. Call 244-0029, visit www.newworldcafedsm.com or find it on Facebook.

Wells Fargo Arena begins renovation

A new center-court video board is only the beginning of the $2.5 million renovation that began recently at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. A new lighting system, new exterior video boards, HD camera equipment and TVs, and a new control room are also on the list of improvements for the event center. The new center video board will feature two high-definition screens with nearly three times the resolution and four times the viewing area of the existing video board. Featuring a curved display, the screen measures 28 feet and 1 inch wide by 15 feet and 7 inches tall. This will be the first upgrade to the board since Wells Fargo Arena opened in 2005. The new LED lighting system, made by Oskaloosa-based Musco Sports Lighting, is projected to use about 72 percent less energy, resulting in about $40,000 of annual savings. The exterior video boards on Third Street and Fifth Avenue will be installed sometime after Memorial Day. They will have higher-resolution screens to display live scoring and updates from inside the arena. Renovations are expected to be complete before the start of the Iowa Wild and Iowa Energy seasons this fall.

Hubbell plans new development downtown

Hubbell Realty Co. has plans to build a 47-unit townhouse development in downtown Des Moines. Hubbell plans to break ground on the new project, called 5fifty5, this summer. It is a $13 million development at 555 S.W. Seventh St., and it will feature a variety of floor plans. Sitting on the north side of the closed Jackson Street pedestrian bridge, 5fifty5 will have both two- and three-story townhouses. The three-story homes will have two balconies, including one off the master bedroom. Units will have up to three bathrooms. Rental rates begin at about $2,000 for smaller units, with the first scheduled to open in spring 2016. Hubbell’s project was approved a site plan for the development by the Des Moines Plan and Zoning Commission.

Campustown in Ames receives major facelift

Students will return to a very different Campustown this fall. Four new developments are expected to open before the fall semester. Gilbrane Inc., a Rhode-Island-based developer, is building a mixed-use project called 23 Twenty Lincoln. It has six floors of apartments with a street-level retail space located at 2320 Lincoln Way. Randall Corp., based in Ames, has plans to build a five-story building with four floors of loft-style apartments and street-level retail at 2520 Chamberlain St. The Opus Group, a Minneapolis-based company, is working on a six-story, mixed-use project called The Foundry at 2300 Lincoln Way. Kingland Systems, based in Clear Lake, is constructing a 75,000-square foot, mixed-used space comprising three stories on the southeast corner of Lincoln Way and Welch Avenue. That building will house a CVS on the ground floor and offices for Kingland, the Iowa State Daily, the ISU Foundation and University Relations. CV