Table 128 Bistro and Bar, a popular restaurant that’s been open since 2013, is closing its doors in Clive but plans are in the works to reopen at a new location in the fall.

Lynn Pritchard, executive chef and owner, told the Business Record that he hadn’t planned on changing restaurant locations during a pandemic. However, he said owners of the retail center at 12695 University Ave. in Clive told him that they weren’t renewing his lease when it expired in the summer.

“I was a little surprised by that and upset for about 10 minutes,” said Pritchard, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of American in Hyde Park, N.Y. “I decided to pick up a new lease and move. … It’s surprising how gilded that [new door that opens] can be.”

Efforts to reach the center’s owners were unsuccessful.

Table 128’s Clive location will close on July 24. During July, Pritchard plans to serve past menu items that have been customer favorites. He also plans to invite former staff members to return to do stints behind the bar and as servers.

Pritchard said he is close to signing a lease for a new location for Table 128 that is in Des Moines and “close to downtown.”

The restaurant, which will continue to be called Table 128 Bistro and Bar, will be located in a recently completed new building, he said. “My infrastructure and aesthetics need to be put in place.”

He declined to say more about the new location until a lease has been signed.

Menu items that made Table 128 popular with customers will remain, Pritchard said. “I’ve built a brand that has really been centric around constant change, whether that be the artwork on the wall or the food on the menu. Those pieces that are very central to what we are, they won’t change.”

The new location will include an area for private dining as well as an outdoor patio that is larger than the one at Table 128’s current location, Pritchard said.

The pandemic has changed how restaurant owners manage their businesses, Pritchard said. Restaurants need to have enough space to arrange tables so that they can be adequately distanced from each other. Restaurants also need to be able to accommodate a greater volume of takeout meals, he said.

Outdoor space needs to be able to be used longer during a year, he said. “That means having cool water misters in the summer and infrared heaters in cooler weather. Those and some other things will allow us to be outside – and still social – longer and not be subject to the omnipresent fear of ‘what if I’m sitting next to somebody who has coronavirus.’”

Pritchard said staff that currently works at Table 128 will also work at the new location, which is expected to open by mid-fall.