After living in Park for most of his life, it made sense to Ray Crump, owner of Dome Souvenirs Plus, to move the store to Park when its old location by the Metrodome began to fall apart.

“I live in St. Louis Park. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years now,” Crump said. “I like the community and I use to run by this building pretty much everyday and when it became for sale, I decided to look into it.”

Crump said he believes the new locations will help increase business especially because the new store doesn’t require a driving downtown and has free parking.

“I think the community in general will buy stuff like the who people that don’t want to go downtown,” Crump said.

Sophomore Nicole Sanford said she think students will shop at Dome Souvenirs to purchases apparel for upcoming sports seasons.

“Students will definitely shop there to purchase jerseys for sports teams they like and since it’s football season, I think students will go there to buy jerseys for the upcoming season,” Sanford said.  

Dome Souvenirs will continue to primarily sell Twins and Vikings apparel, but it will also introduce some Park apparel, which Crump said he thinks will help increase business.

“We primarily sell Twins and Vikings stuff, but we will also sell St. Louis Park apparel, which I think it’s going to increase overall,” Crump said.

Although there are already many ways to purchase Park apparel, Sanford said she thinks it’s a good idea for the store to sell Park apparel too.

“Since the store is right next to the high school it makes sense that they sell Park clothes,” Sanford said.

However, Crump is not looking to compete with House of Sport, which sells only Park apparel. Dome Souvenirs will still mainly make its profit from professional sports team apparel and will start off small with the amount of Park apparel they sell.

“We don’t want to put (House of Sport) out of business. St. Louis Park apparel is not our primary focus, but it would be short-sighted if we didn’t sell it being right next to the high school,” Crump said. “Yes we will. We will probably start off pretty small with what we are carrying and depending on how things go, we will bring in more.”