Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

November 10, 2012

New businesses pop up in Gardiner, just in time for holidays

By Paul Koenig
Staff Writer

GARDINER -- Shoppers this holiday season will be treated to a downtown that looks a bit more full than they're used to seeing.

Four new stores have moved in for the months of November and December as part of a Gardiner Main Street project providing free rent for "pop-up" businesses during the busy holiday shopping months.

The pop-up stores include a women's clothing store, a Maine-made craft store, a charitable second-hand store and a store the owner calls a "small-scale Marden's."

Gardiner Main Street worked with landlords of six downtown storefronts to offer free rent to help fill some vacant spaces and increase foot traffic for all downtown businesses.

The idea was to lower barriers for store owners looking to expand in a new location or for people with new businesses hoping to find a storefront.

Jennifer Bergeron, owner of the women's clothing store earth bound, one of the pop-up stores, also has locations in Waterville and Hallowell. She sees this as an experiment but said a good holiday season at the Gardiner pop-up could lead to a permanent opening.

"If this is a success, it's a huge upside to opening here," she said

Bergeron said she hopes the holiday shopping brings in plenty of foot traffic, but the key factor in whether she'll open a store in Gardiner is if people walking through the door actually buy something.

Besides measurable goals such as increasing foot traffic, Gardiner Main Street Executive Director Patrick Wright has an intangible goal of gauging the project's success: creating buzz for downtown.

Right now, he said, it's still too early to tell whether that's been successful.

"It definitely gives us a chance, and that's what we were going for, to grab people's attention and say, 'Look, there's some different things going on in Gardiner,'" Wright said.

He said the ultimate goal is eventually to find permanent tenants for the empty storefronts.

Businesses wanting to fill the spaces had only a couple weeks to pull a proposal together. Of the six applicants, two ended up dropping out, Wright said; but a secondhand clothing store decided to open a permanent store at one of the locations, independent of the project.

Wright said one of the pop-up stores is able to occupy two connected units, so all six spaces will be filled.

Bergeron said having a downtown willing to take a chance on a project such as this is encouraging, but the empty storefronts that lead to it is a bit concerning. Every empty storefront shoppers encounter as they walk down Water Street is a reason to turn around, Bergeron said.

"We're trying to be a little bit bold and try to focus on building an economic model that will work and be sustainable for the future," said Nate Rudy, director of economic and community development for Gardiner. "Sometimes you've got to take a calculated risk, and I think Patrick and Main Street have done a great thing with this project, and I'm glad to support it."

City councilors voted to waive any municipal fees associated with opening these business to encourage more people to apply, and Rudy has worked with Wright on cooperative advertising for the new stores.

"It seems as though Gardiner is on the right path," Bergeron said. "I think people are getting tired of going to the mall. I think people are often disappointed with online shopping, especially with clothing."

She said her store would benefit from similar stores downtown that would make Gardiner more of a shopping destination.

Rudy said he hopes the pop-up stores will create just that, providing an alternative to big-box stores this holiday season.

(Continued on page 2)

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