Nonprofit opens retail center in North St. Louis
A new brick building stands out from some of its dilapidated and rundown neighbors along Martin Luther King Drive in the Ville neighborhood.
A sign outside the building, home to a new retail center, says, "Success Starts Here" and beckons prospective business owners to inquire about renting space.
A promotional goods and lettering business catering to fraternities and sororities already fills one of the eight storefronts in the 7,200-square-foot building. A women’s wig store is slated to open next month. And a sandwich shop is in the works.
Habitat for Neighborhood Business, a local nonprofit run by current and former business executives, hopes to fill all of the storefronts by the fall.
"Our mission is to target economically challenged areas," said Terry Donohue, Habitat’s president and executive-in-residence at St. Louis University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, one of the partners on the project. "Our goal is to bring businesses back into the neighborhoods in the hope that they will spark some more economic development and job growth in the neighborhood."
This is the first freestanding center the group has built, which was one of its original goals when Habitat was founded about five years ago, said Donohue, a retired Enterprise Rent-a-Car vice president.
The project cost including land and construction was about $1.2 million. Construction began in late 2008 and finished up in the latter half of last year.
A 2006 study by researchers at St. Louis University found a large retail gap in the Ville neighborhood, with some of the greatest needs being a grocery, dry cleaners, a pharmacy and more restaurants, Donohue said. He hopes that some of his tenants will be able to fill those needs but added that the group doesn’t have the resources to recruit specific businesses.
"We’re just trying to find people who are interested in opening a retail or service business in that neighborhood," he said.
Habitat has interviewed hundreds of people interested in moving into the new retail space in the last couple of years. Many of them were already running businesses out of their homes, he said.
"We found a lot of bright people with good business ideas," Donohue said. "But you have to have your own skin in the game. You have to have equity."
And the economy has only made it harder for new entrepreneurs to build enough equity to secure a loan, he said.
For those who have enough startup money, Habitat offers them storefront space at a discounted rate — 50 percent off an estimated market rate in the first year, 25 percent off the second year and 10 percent off after that.
In addition, it pays part of the costs to attend training courses on how to run a business, provides established industry executives as mentors, gives them a computer to keep their records and has SLU students help them with their monthly accounting.
The SLU student who helps Robert Jones manage his books and inventory using a computer accounting system has been a big help, said the owner of Alpha One Greek & Promotional Items, which opened in December.
Jones, 46, had run his business out of his home and through a website for about 10 years. Then a couple of years ago he started looking for a brick-and-mortar store, but he put those plans on hold when the economy tanked.
He jumped when he heard about the new retail center, not only because of its location in an urban neighborhood but also because of the extra help it provided — the discounted rent, the emotional support and accounting help.
He has three employees, all of whom are students at Harris-Stowe State University. He’s been pleased with the business at his store thus far and is planning more marketing in the future.
"I’ve gotten a lot of traffic from Harris-Stowe," he said. "Now I want to push it to Wash U and SLU."