TWO COMPANIES DUE TO OPEN CAPE STORES

Some large spaces are expected to be filled in Cape Girardeau this month.

Eddie Bauer, a men's and women's clothing and footwear store, will open in West Park Mall, filling two spaces down the Famous Barr corridor.

Office Furniture Manufacturing Co., which previously operated a store in downtown Cape Girardeau, will return to its site near Independence and Main.

Eddie Bauer, which has more than 400 stores nationwide and in Canada, along with more than 50 in Japan and Germany, is expected to open in West Park Mall Sept. 25.

The Eddie Bauer Co,, which operates retail stores and a catalog operation, is headquartered in Redmond, Wash. The company has three stores in the St. Louis area, including operations at Union Station and the Galleria.

Office Furniture Manufacturing Co. is the former Office Furniture Machine Co. (OFMCO), headquartered at Sikeston. The company has started manufacturing new office furniture to go along with its line of used office furniture.

With the line of new furniture, the company will expand and will stock a showroom to open in early September at 18 N. Main.

"We'll basically have new furniture at the Cape Girardeau location," said Don Lowe, president of OFMCO.

OFMCO recently started manufacturing office furniture in a portion of its building on Blodgett Road in Sikeston.

"The response has been good," said Lowe. "We are expanding, and currently, we're stocking the downtown Cape Girardeau store."

Once the store opens, it will be open six days a week.

OFMCO, one of the nation's largest buyers and sellers of new and used office furniture, purchased the building that formerly housed the Montgomery Ward store.

OFMCO has been in the wholesale used office furniture business for more than 20 years.

The Cape Girardeau store remained open only a short while before selling its inventory to a Cape Girardeau businessman, who remained open at the location about a year before closing.

Portions of the downtown building have been vacant more than two years.

The upstairs portion of the building now contains eight loft apartments.

Lowe added the apartments -- ranging from 1,000 to 1,200 square feet, in early 1994.

In another big retail announcement in the tri-state area, Gymboree, a children's clothing store, has opened at Kentucky Oaks Mall in Paducah.