June 15, 2026

Sometimes, things can happen just that quickly.

Last fall, Abigail Lexen and her husband, Paul, walked down Garretson’s Main Avenue, dreaming about its possibilities.

In January, Lexen met Amber Meyer when both women attended a Garretson Economic Development meeting, and a conversation revealed that they had similar goals.

“We just clicked,” Lexen said. “Oh, my word, we’re so aligned on our thoughts and visions for this place.”

This month, Meyer will have a soft opening for her new ice cream and dessert shop on that same Main Avenue in time for the crowds that attend Jesse James Days. The freezer has arrived, and the ice cream is coming. The town festival runs June 19-20.

Lexen temporarily will open her new coffee shop for the Fourth of July week, with a permanent start to business later this summer.

Like Lexen’s coffee shop, Meyer’s business, The Study, is under construction in a historic quartzite building that has stood on Garretson’s primary retail street since 1908. The building has three doors interspersed among large windows. The first door will lead to The Study. The middle door will take tenants and visitors upstairs to apartments. This fall, the third door will be the entrance to the Quartzite Coffee House, Lexen’s cafe.

The coffee house will be toward the main floor’s rear, with a common space between the two eateries available to customers. The two businesses will have complementary hours, with the coffee house open in mornings and early afternoons and the ice cream shop in the afternoons and evenings.

“The seating will all be open; she will have seating, I will have seating, but there’s plenty of room when we’re both open,” Lexen said. “You can come get a coffee and the kid an ice cream if we’re both open at same time. Our design aesthetics are slightly different, but they meld really well.”

Meyer will serve ice cream made by Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream of Madison, Wisconsin, which states it uses “real Wisconsin dairy, premium ingredients and all-natural sugars.” That manufacturer will be unique to the area, Lexen said. Other dessert items also will be offered.

Meyer and her husband, Kyle, are renovating the store area in preparation for the official opening less than two weeks away. The Lexens and their two children, Noah and Natalie, also are busy painting, pulling up old floor tile and upgrading the plumbing and electricity.

They have hit a few stumbles along the way, Lexen said. She envisioned restoring the original hardware floor to a shining varnished finish. Reality was different.

“All these friends came over on the first day, and they’re sweating, and we discovered … chunks of floor are missing, and there’s plywood in places,” Lexen said. Instead of the original floor, the building now will display a laminate floor.

The presence of family and friends helping with the restoration, which began June 1 on the day the sale was finalized, has created a sense of community around the project, Lexen said. It’s that spirit that led her to decide to open a coffee shop and make plans for Main Avenue Garretson’s future.

“I could open up a shack on the corner and serve coffee, but I want to bring this building back to life and be able to share,” she said. “That’s the reason we’re doing this — for the people and to give back. It’s really important and impactful.”

In past years, the 116-year-old building has held a general store; ‘O’ So Good restaurant, which was featured on the television show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” and closed in 2021; Annie’s Coffee Bar & Roastery, which later reopened in another Garretson space before moving to Brandon in 2025; and The Combine, a bar and grill that merged with the Sports Cabin and moved into that space. So many people have shared their memories of the building, Lexen said, that she’d like to write a book detailing its history.

Like several others on Main Avenue, Lexen’s building is made of the distinctive quartzite that also can be seen in the three parks around Garretson: Split Rock, Devils Gulch and Palisades. Visitors to the parks will welcome a reason to come into Garretson for shopping and refreshments.

Lexen and Meyer would like to see more reasons develop soon. When the two presented their vision for Main Avenue and its historic buildings to the Garretson Economic Development team, they left with Lexen as the new chair of the Main Avenue Revitalization Committee.

That was the meeting Meyer attended. The New Prague, Minnesota, native has 20 years’ experience in the hospitality industry. Lexen, a teacher who has focused on homeschooling in recent years, has coffee shop experience.

Lexen and her husband have lived in Garretson for six years. Paul Lexen is a software developer/architect at Lexen Solutions in Sioux Falls. The time was right for her to try something new, Lexen said.

“With part-time homeschool and the Garretson school, it opened an opportunity for me to look and see what I can do,” she said. “I’ve always loved hospitality and having people over. I loved the idea of community and how it can bring people together to get to know people.”

The Lexens have renamed their building The Quartzite. When it came up for sale, they toured it and decided it would be a good place for the community to meet. Meyer had been looking at other buildings on Main Avenue, and she was invited to consider The Quartzite.

While few other physical changes can be seen on Main Avenue — although the new owners of the grocery store plan to double its size — Lexen knows many others are excited about reinvigorating the downtown.

“We’ve been in conversations with business owners and the city about what that could look like,” she said. “The library, City Hall and individual businesses are catching the excitement. I’d love Main Avenue to be the avenue to the parks. There are no parks like this anywhere else. Garretson could be a little bit of a hub for the area.”

Meyer’s vision for The Study is for it to be Garretson’s second living room, a place where people can have fun and indulge in ice cream treats. The walls will be covered in corkboard, and music will be playing. The seating will invite people to take their time, Lexen said.

“She wants people to stay and linger and celebrate, to get that indulgent treat,” Lexen said of Meyer.

While Meyer hopes to be completely open for Jesse James Days, Lexen knows she must start small. She will open next month with hot brew and cold brew coffee and lemonade, something people can grab and go, no matter what state her coffee shop is in.

“If it’s hot” during the Fourth of July celebrations, “they can get a cold drink. If it’s cold out, they can get a hot drink,” Lexen said.

She plans to build her menu slowly so she can offer a high-quality product coming out of a commercial kitchen. She wants to begin with home-baked goods and perhaps by next year begin offering sandwiches and simple food offerings. Her goal is to be fully open and functional as a coffee shop by September.