Coach, a designer men’s and women’s accessory retailer, will open Oct. 7 at the Outlets at Vicksburg as expansion plans discussed for years at the South Frontage Road shopping center are a smaller step closer to reality.

The store will go in next to Bass Company Store and feature bags and accessories primarily, said Andrea Shaw Resnick, senior vice president of investor relations for the New York-based retailer.

“It will carry an assortment of fine accessories and gifts for women and men — including handbags, women’s and men’s small leather goods, weekend and travel accessories, watches, outerwear, scarves, sunwear, jewelry, fragrance and related accessories,” she said.

As of 2010, the company had 342 retail locations and 121 factory-leased stores in North America. The brand is available in more than 900 department stores in the U.S., according to the store brand’s website.

Once open, the store will bring the mall’s occupancy to 26 in its 30 spaces. Bringing in the upscale tenant represents a win for the shopping center, built in 1995 and which recently refinanced a loan to add more storefronts to its L-shaped, 103,450 square feet of shopping, general manager Margaret Gilmer said.

“It’s a much sought-after brand,” she said. “They’re well-respected leader and a different level of tenant.”

Drawings on the center’s website for years have shown an expanded outlet center that would bracket the west end of the parking lot. Gilmer said renderings drawn by builders hired by mall owners, Newport Beach, Calif.-based Craig Realty Group, are designed similarly and a “complete facelift” is to begin “in the next 60 days.”

Expansion at the mall has been a piece of a makeover puzzle that has as its key piece an extension of South Frontage Road over railroad tracks that divide the mall from the rest of Vicksburg’s frontage road businesses. A right-of-way review near the site has been completed by Ridgeland-based Wilbur Smith Associates as part of a larger, multimillion-dollar makeover of Interstate 20 through six miles of the city, according to the Mississippi Department of Transportation in a release in August that outlined updated projects..