Lisa and Charles Montgomery's search for a building in downtown Scottsdale to house their feng shui business involved much more than comparing rents and sizing up square footage. "We almost didn't expect to find one that would work," Lisa Montgomery said. "We spent a lot of time here looking at all the buildings . . . and laying out little charts, saying no, that won't work, no, that won't work, and when it came down to it, it was between two.

"We picked this one primarily because the energy was not only good from the old cycle, but the skylights created a new cycle. So I was pretty much guaranteed that I had a high energy level in this space."Feng shui is an ancient Chinese philosophy focused on using the energy of a person's space to create better luck and harmony. For Lisa Montgomery, the approach made perfect sense.

The couple decided Studio 16 at 7121 E. Fifth Ave., on the interior courtyard of Kiva Center, was the perfect location for Lisa's Feng Shui Arizona. They plan to open Oct. 1.

"We actually had to look at our Chinese astrology to see if it was a good time to open the store," Montgomery said. "One of the things I had to work out on the lease is Charles couldn't sign until after Sept. 7 because his energy wasn't right."

Sunbrella Properties owns Kiva Center, which encompasses the southeastern corner of Fifth Avenue and Craftsman Court. The interior courtyard has numerous vacancies and the center has been hit hard by the recession, said Sue Vossmer, Sunbrella spokeswoman.

Lisa's Feng Shui Arizona is the first new tenant the center has had in the past several months, and Vossmer hopes this will be the start of a trend.

"We're definitely getting more phone calls and more interest," she said. "People are being more cautious about starting up . . . new businesses, but there's more interest than I've seen in months."

Before the recession, Kiva Center rarely had a vacancy that lasted 30 days, Vossmer said.

"It's like a little green piece of heaven in the middle of Old Town," she said. "We've had everything in there from a florist to a restaurant, to Ernie the perfumer."

Now Lisa's Feng Shui will be the latest arrival, and Lisa Montgomery already has a long list of clients eager to check out her new store.

"I had a location in Mesa that actually was very successful, and I just got really tired," she said. "We moved to Scottsdale and I took a year and a half off, but there are complications of not having a store that I didn't perceive.

"I have about 1,500 permanent clients, and those are people who have had success with this, so they just want every year for us to come back out and check everything, and just make sure that their feng shui is perfect and impeccable because all this neat stuff happened."

The Kiva Center location will include three areas. The front room will be a store that offers "basically cures," Montgomery said.

"If your relationship is falling apart, we're going to find you a couple of ducks that are kissing and a special red envelope to write down what you want in your relationship," she said. "This store will be full of that kind of stuff."

The second room will be called "Asian drama." It will be more decorative and "intense," and will have a lot of Chinese history attached to it," Montgomery said.

The third room will be a classroom in which Montgomery, a certified feng shui consultant in the United States and Singapore, will teach regular classes and train practitioners.

Downtown Scottsdale has been going through a tough time with the recession and summer off-season, and Montgomery said feng shui will "heighten the energy."

"I do have cures that we could put into Old Town and actually create a huge energy there, but they're pretty intense and we would have to get the whole town together, so we'll wait on that one," she said.