Hot Springs is set to gain at least three new businesses within the next year, including Crumbl Cookies, Sportsman's Warehouse and Hurts Donut.
Crumbl Cookies will soon take up half of Nest's space at 423 Cornerstone Blvd. Nest was having a liquidation sale on Thursday in one half of the store.
"Nest is changing directions a little and doing more of a boutique, interior furnishings and interior design place," said Roxanne Garrett, the vice president of Garrett Enterprises, which owns the portion of the Cornerstone Market Place with Nest and now Crumbl Cookies. "So they just didn't need as much space."
Crumbl Cookies is projected to open in September, said Cody McPherson, the owner of the Crumbl Cookies businesses in Jonesboro, North Little Rock and soon Hot Springs. Although McPherson is the sole owner of the Crumbl Cookies in Jonesboro, he works with his partner Aaron Duty for the North Little Rock and future Hot Springs locations.
"Whenever I was getting into Crumbl, I knew Hot Springs was on my list," McPherson said. "My first store that I was able to open was obviously in Jonesboro, Arkansas. ... So, I opened that up, and I was like, 'Man, Hot Springs has such a great market. I know the growth that it has and the potential that it has, and I think Crumble would do great.' And whenever they told me that Hot Springs was available, I knew I wanted to open it there in that location."
"I think it's a wonderful thing," Garrett said. "We have, already, fast food, we have a sandwich shop, we have shoes, we have books, there's not a lot of other new companies that provide a lot of excitement and very high traffic. Crumbl exactly fits that. We don't have a cookie factory, a cookie anything anywhere in this area. Crumbl is the up-and-coming franchise."
Also joining the journey to Hot Springs is Hurts Donut, which was confirmed to be coming to Hot Springs by Heather Grimes, who owns both the Little Rock location and the future location in Hot Springs with her husband, Connor Grimes.
The doughnut shop will be located at 200 Spring St., although the business did not have a projected opening date, she said.
Hot Springs is "just a melting pot of an amazing area full of tourists and families and locals," Heather Grimes said. "Great response after 2020 as far as the downtown area goes. Downtown needs us 24/7 because we're technically 25/8 is our slogan."
Sportsman's Warehouse is also set to take the place of what used to be Goody's and then HomeGoods at 436 Cornerstone Blvd.
Sportsman's is projected to open in August, according to Stephen "Redneck" Robbins, project superintendent for W.R. Newman General Contractors, who was working on the construction of the store on Thursday.
"I think it's gonna be good for the economy," he said. "We've actually already had several people that have stopped by the space and inquired about it and were excited about it, that they're actually having a store of this caliber coming in that's actually close for them. Due to all the fishing and sports around here, they have to either shop online or they have to travel at least an hour and a half to get to another store, so this was actually good for the economy here, I believe."
Melanie Rembrandt, the public relations manager for Sportsman's Warehouse, confirmed the store's plan to open in late August in an email to The Sentinel-Record.
Marvin Douberly works on the remodeling project inside what will soon be Crumbl Cookies. – Photo by Courtney Edwards of The Sentinel-Record