Storefront for Community Design is at it again.
Storefront for Community Design is at it again. For those of you who are art students, the name may ring a bell seeing as the Storefront offers classes to visual art and design students.
However, during the UCI bike race, Storefront is working on widening its reach even further.
Their new project, Pop-Up RVA, hopes of building up the downtown area during the race and give local retailers the chance to get their wears seen in a prime location along Broad St.
Pop-Up RVA allows local vendors to rent newly renovated spaces before and during the race. There are a few buildings in downtown Richmond that have been cleared out and revamped and left with plenty of wide open space so vendors can set up shop however they’d like.
Storefront for Community Design prides itself on being for the community. Their objective is to work within the city and alongside its citizens, as opposed to merely marking their territory in order to take over.
While the Storefront is located here in Richmond, it is part of a larger national organization whose goal is to benefit the local communities they interact with.
Pop-ups are not a brand new idea- they have been around both nationally and internationally for several years.
“There have been lots of great efforts in Richmond for temporary retail,” Storefront Director Tyler King said. “What I think is special about this project is that there’s a cluster of formally commercial buildings […] these were bustling department stores.”
Read more about King and Storefront here via GayRVA!
The buildings where the pop-ups will be during the race were previously retail shops and have since closed down. King has had the idea for renovation tucked away for some time now. During his undergraduate years at VCU, he recalled seeing empty buildings and yearning for someone to make use of them.
“Why is the developer just leaving all of these buildings empty?” He asked himself.
King’s hope for the Pop-Up RVA project is that vendors and businesses who are thinking about doing work around the area will continue to use the spaces so they can reach their full potential.
The empty, revamped buildings are located on the corner of N 2nd street and East Broad.
“Central National Bank is going to bring 288 new residents […] all of those residents are going to create a demand for more retail at these corners. I can’t speak for the developers, but these buildings will probably be next in the process,” King said
As if having community in the title of the project was not evidence enough, King stressed the fact that the community was undoubtedly Storefront’s main priority.
“The basic eyes-on-the-street principle is huge for the community,” he said. “When people walk by, we have something to say. It’s so much more than just an asset that we’re painting.”
In addition to the folks that currently live in the city, Storefront hopes to have their work set up the future city dwellers for success.
“We’ve found throughout this process that there are so many networks within this wave of millennials that can accomplish a lot without bricks and mortar, but when you actually have a the possibly to have bricks and mortar- to have a physical space- that’s really beneficial to who will be the makers of the community,” he said.
“Now that people are more interested in moving back to the city, pop-ups become a way for us to imagine what retail could look like.”
There is still space available to rent, head over to their website here to reserve your space now!
