A project in Somerville, Massachusetts, has transformed a vacant storefront into a pop-up space to hold events for the community, and is part of a push to revitalize an area of the city.
This month, the space at 20 Broadway in East Somerville has been holding a wide range of events for people to attend for free — everything from art exhibits, to vendors, to community meetings and more.
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"Our goal is with looking at vacant spaces, we try to see what kind of new uses could come from them and it kind of draws attention to these spaces as well," Community Manager for CultureHouse Rishika Dhawan said.
The project is a result of a partnership between East Somerville Main Streets and CultureHouse, which specializes in this type of effort.
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"We hope that after this, the vacant properties and vacant spaces around Broadway can bring in more business to the community as well," Dhawan said.
The neighborhood is starting to get some more traction, but it was impacted heavily by the pandemic.
"We’re restaurant heavy, so we have a lot of restaurants, and that is a sector that was hit hard," Executive Director at East Somerville Main Streets Lindsay Allen said. "And we also have about 75% minority-owned businesses. And those businesses often don't have the same social economic capital that other businesses do."
Organizers hope the project will help to not only give a quick boost to the area, but also guide future development in the neighborhood.
"We’re really interested to see as development comes to East Somerville, what do residents want to see in those spaces," Allen said.
People who attend the pop-up events at the space this month complete surveys to help give their feedback.
Annie Silva serves as the small business liaison for East Somerville Main Streets, and also owns Lilybird Coffee, based in Wakefield. She was able to bring her business to the pop-up space recently and tested out a new drink: a coffee slushy.
"We took our recipe testing for coffee slushies and we brought them to CultureHouse kind of to see how the product worked... and to really get feedback from customers on a really small scale," Silva said. "It was really well-received."
The pop-up runs through June 4, and there are still plenty of opportunities to attend an event and connect with the community.
