The Challenge
Jack Lewis Jewelers is a nearly 100-year-old institution, founded in the 1920s by watchmaker Jack Lewis. When they set out to build a new flagship store on a tight, sub-acre lot in Bloomington, they weren’t just commissioning a building; they were building onto that legacy.
The idea was deceptively simple and enormously demanding at the same time: create a space that felt like “Las Vegas or Manhattan,” while still feeling unmistakably like home to central Illinois. A store that could triple case space, house three working goldsmith benches, an accredited gem lab, a private bridal viewing suite, a full bar, a second-floor office and conference space, and a rooftop terrace, all while sitting on a footprint of less than an acre.
That last constraint alone reshaped the entire project. As John Carter, President and CEO, put it:
“The footprint of the lot… it’s a little less than an acre. So by the time you had parking and everything else, if we didn’t go up, we would have ended up with the same amount of space that we had before.”
Building up, not out, meant a two-story jewelry store, a far less common build than a single-story retail box, with all the structural, mechanical, and design complexity that comes with it.
The Vision
They came to the project with a clear point of view, and it started with a single word: service. Every design decision had to answer to it.
Height and light as an experience. The Jack Lewis team wanted first-time visitors to stop in their tracks the moment they walked in. That meant designing for a dramatic 23-foot ceiling that still felt warm rather than cavernous, and pairing it with natural light.
A working shop, not just a showroom. The repair shop needed to support at least three goldsmiths working daily, with a separate polishing room, proper dust collection, and ventilation, solving problems the old, tighter shop never could.
Privacy built into the floor plan. Rather than placing bridal and engagement rings front-and-center, the design tucked that department toward the back, behind custom laser-cut lattice screens, with a private viewing room just off the main floor; this gave customers room to shop for a life milestone without an audience.
A building that tells a story. From a working clock displaying the store’s 1920s logo out front, to a custom lattice and color scheme that became the brand’s new packaging palette, to a legacy display case built specifically to house decades of collected artifacts, the architecture needed to carry a century of history.
The Build
Delivering on that vision required solving problems that don’t show up in a typical retail build-out:
Vertical construction on a constrained lot. Going to two stories to preserve parking and site coverage meant the entire program (retail, bridal, back-of-house, gemology, and hospitality) had to be sequenced and stacked without compromising the flow customers would eventually experience on the ground floor.
A 23-foot ceiling built for warmth, not just height. Tall, dramatic ceilings often read as cold or industrial. The build had to achieve scale and light while landing on a soft, warm material palette overhead: a detail specifically called out as one of their two favorite features of the finished building.
Custom architectural elements at retail speed. The laser-cut lattice panels that now anchor the back wall and have since become a signature backdrop in the brand’s marketing required sourcing a specialty fabricator and coordinating a fully custom design, not an off-the-shelf product.
Infrastructure for a working bench shop. A functioning three-goldsmith shop with dedicated polishing and ventilation isn’t standard retail buildout; it’s closer to light industrial work, folded seamlessly into a luxury retail environment.
A rooftop terrace as usable, code-compliant space. With a stated occupancy of 40, the rooftop had to be built out as genuine event space (fire pit, drink rail, planters, and sightlines) rather than an afterthought patio.
The Result
The store opened to what was an immediate, visceral reaction from long-time clients:
“So many times people will say, ‘I can’t tell if I’m in Las Vegas or Manhattan or Bloomington. But you’ve done it, and it feels very welcoming.'”
Case space grew from roughly 170 linear feet to nearly 400. The business added a third goldsmith, launched a new luxury brand partnership (Marco Bicego) in a space built specifically to showcase it, and created a rooftop venue the company now uses for private client events and community not-for-profit gatherings.
Perhaps most tellingly, one long-time customer summed up the reaction they’ve heard again and again:
“I can’t believe this place… It makes you proud of your town, doesn’t it?”
The building is the physical realization of a promise nearly a century in the making:
“There would be no store today in this location if Mr. Lewis didn’t have that vision. And that’s why his name will always appear on the building.”
Why It Worked
Projects like this succeed when a construction partner can do two things at once: execute genuinely complex, non-standard technical work, vertical construction on a tight urban lot, custom fabrication, light-industrial infrastructure inside a luxury retail shell, while staying disciplined enough to protect a client’s story at every turn. Every architectural decision on this project, from the ceiling height to the placement of a single legacy display case, ultimately traced back to what the client needed it to say.
That combination, technical execution in service of a client’s vision, is what turned a nearly 100-year-old vision into what their President and CEO, John Carter, now calls, without hesitation,
“the nicest thing I’ve ever built in my life.”
