With its exposed steel beams, sealed concrete floors and 19-foot-high windows on three sides, the new home of Two Rivers Marketing Group will have a decidedly industrial feel. But when your clients include names such as Vermeer Manufacturing Co., Pella Corp. and Ingersoll-Rand Co., it’s a natural move, said the company’s co-owner, Tom Dunphy.

Two Rivers, which has grown from 20 associates to more than 50 in the past five years, purchased the warehouse-office building at 106 E. 6th St. earlier this year and is midway through renovating it.

Currently located at 500 E. Locust St., the marketing and public relations company was one day away from moving into the former Ramsey Pontiac building it had just renovated downtown when that structure burned down in December 2004.

“We hope to have a ribbon cutting on Dec. 20, which is the same day we were scheduled to move into the (Ramsey) building,” Dunphy said.

When renovation is completed later this year, the office portion of the building, which has a separate address at 107 E. Fifth St., will house the CEO Center, leased professional office suites that will offer shared services to small entrepreneurial businesses. An abbreviation for Creative Entrepreneur Organization, the CEO Center will provide a boardroom, conference rooms, a shared receptionist and an environment suited to select entrepreneurial companies, said Jim Goodman, owner of Customer Ease Inc., who will manage the center.

“He (Dunphy) didn’t want to become a landlord, and I had a goal of starting an entrepreneur center,” Goodman said. The arrangement was also a good fit because the tenant companies will likely need Two Rivers’ services as they grow, he said.

Goodman said nearly half of the 23 suites, which he described as “good-sized,” each a minimum of 300 square feet, have been leased.

“We have a venture capital company that’s interested, an attorney also interested, an accounting firm and an HR specialist as well, so we’re going to have all the functional areas (that a start-up company would need),” he said. “It’s a value for them to grow their customers – everybody’s goal is to get them to critical mass as fast as possible.”

Many of the start-ups he’s talked with already have about 10 employees and are “just looking for a good place to grow,” Goodman said. “Sometimes when you have similar companies next door, you can benefit from that excitement, or have similar technologies you can use.”

The CEO Center’s tenants won’t be the only companies growing at the East Village location. Dunphy said Two Rivers’32,000-square-foot space is large enough to take it to the 100-employee level.

With the eastern extension of the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway scheduled to be built just to the south, “the building’s right in the middle of where they’re trying to improve downtown Des Moines, so we want to be part of that,” he said.