A Washington couple is taking their decades of experience in collecting and selling antiques to the downtown square, as the Washington Chamber of Commerce celebrated their “soft opening” with a ribbon cutting last Friday.

Central Park Antiques is owned by Ed and Karen Chabal and was open for a sneak peek this weekend for the public to check out their collectibles. Karen shared with the Chamber Ambassadors Friday how the couple has been selling antiques at various shows and malls in southeast Iowa for the past 20 years, and the idea to open their own store began seven years ago when they moved back to their hometown from Mount Pleasant, “It has been a subtle drive within us to be able to contribute to Washington and to the really vital business district that has been growing and developing through the years. And so we kind of started just talking about maybe having our own antique shop and looked at a variety of properties.”

Ed shared that his love of antiques began in high school going to auctions with his parents. He’s particularly fond of older woodworking tools, and is interested in bringing his demonstration skills from Midwest Old Threshers to Washington, “It’s a vision that hopefully maybe I’ll be able to demonstrate in here at some point. You know, set up a workbench in the window or a shaving horse. What we want to do is we want to attract people, again, to our retail community, a lot of people from out of town as well as people from around here.”

Retired teacher and local historian Michael Zahs is also playing a hand in Central Park Antiques, sharing some of his collectibles through the store. The store is currently closed as the Chabals complete preparations for their grand opening on August 4th.