The Cary community has been outstanding in its support of her Lego, game and puzzle store, The Pieceful Project, owner Jessica Stetson said.

“We have been able to grow significantly there,” Stetson said as she announced the opening of her second location at 395 Cary-Algonquin Road in Cary. That’s in addition to the existing Cary store at 27 Jandus Road.

The grand opening event of the Cary-Algonquin Road space began Friday but continues Saturday beginning at 11 a.m.

The new location will cater to a specialized audience, Stetson said.

“As we are meeting and learning about all of these people, there was an opening for something a little more game-focused,” Stetson said.

The new location will give gamers a spot to buy, learn about and play their favorite TCGs – tradable card games.

The most-known tradable card game might be Pokemon, Stetson said. But another game, My Little Pony, has recently picked up steam too.

“It came out of nowhere and is doing super well now,” Stetson said.

She also had to balance her now-thriving Lego piece mail-order service and the space it needs at the Jandus Road location.

“We were running out of space,” Stetson said.

Stetson participates in bricklink.com. The site allows Lego users to buy individual pieces from resellers like her, and Stetson will ship to buyers in the U.S.

“We get a lot of calls from people who just need one random piece,” she said, adding that part of the business has grown since she opened the store in July 2024.

“We needed to either move stuff out of [Jandus Road] so we could ... expand our bricklink footprint,” or move it to another space, Stetson said.

She picked the new site based on one of the neighbors, in hopes it would bring clients to the shopping center – the now-closed Cary Dairy.

But nearby parks, preschools, a driving school and an athletic center also help to raise visibility for the location, she added.

“It is a community gathering location,” Stetson said, adding she is excited to see who moves into the ice cream shop. “We are happy to partner with whoever comes here next.”

But the two local stores – bookending Cary with one on either end of Route 14 – will differentiate in what they sell.

The Cary-Algonquin Road space will have smaller items, game card packs and events for those who play the games.

They have a group of girls, ages 10 to 14, who’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons together, said store manager Tallulah Heath, and will invite them to play at the new store too.

“Magic the Gathering is Thursday night for us,” Heath said. “They talk about coming down here.”

The Jandus Road location – which also has a large space for groups to meet and play their favorite role-playing and card games – will continue to carry the large Lego sets.

“Pokemon, we will continue to do there because it is big for us,” Stetson said, adding their “Pokemon Professor” is at the Jandus store from 10:30 a.m. to noon most Saturdays. “She is there with ... people who are interested in trading Pokemon cars but also interested in learning” the game.

Stetson first opened her store concept at McHenry’s Riverwalk Shoppes, and opened and closed a McHenry store since then.

“Our Pokemon was strong” at the now-closed McHenry location, Stetson said, adding that Landmark School closing also affected sales there. “I don’t think that the business model made sense in the location we were in.”