12/28/2023 0 Comments Townsend boxville![]() Retail space in a container ranges from $450 to $850, depending on the size of the space. Once the offer to become an official Boxville partner is extended to a pop-up vendor, they can set up shop at the 51 st Street location. Credit: Chicago Neighborhood Development Award A Boxville pop-up event featuring local small businesses. Roddy works with community partners, like the Small Business Development Center (also located in the Boxville incubator) to ascertain if a business has the potential to become a Boxville partner, using pop-up events to measure business growth potential and prospective community impact. Partners also receive small business training and coaching in areas such as financing, business development, and marketing. Katrina Roddy, Boxville Directorīoxville offers small businesses, entrepreneurs, and budding restaurants opportunities to test and grow their markets before moving on to a long-term or permanent brick and mortar space. We always talk about the circulation of the African American dollar between our Brown and Black communities and our businesses. Now, they’ve got to find a way to draw customers to their location, too.” That’s where Boxville comes in, she explained.īoxville is the tipping point to keeping the Black dollar circulating. “If they are trying to locate on Chicago’s south side, they may have the additional expense of having to renovate a storefront on a commercial strip where few other businesses exist. “Entrepreneurs and small businesses already struggle to find capital,” said Katrina Roddy, Boxville’s Director. ![]() ![]() Years of disinvestment, disengagement, and blight have left the city with few prime commercial spaces, under-resourced business districts and a surplus of dilapidated buildings. For business owners wishing to locate in Bronzeville, expenses and challenges multiply. The start up capital required to access typical commercial storefronts can be wildly expensive. Credit: Boxvilleīoxville allows entrepreneurs and small businesses to open shop affordably and receive supportive services. Boxville is home to nearly a dozen local businesses. Created as a stepping stone for Black businesses to grow, progress, and prosper, the accelerator enterprise is located in a former vacant lot at 330 East 51 st Street and covers about one-third of a city block. Boxville is one of Chicago’s first shipping container restaurant and retail centers. Urban Juncture established Build Bronzeville, which consists of five initiatives designed to revitalize the once-prosperous community.įive years ago, the Boxville Marketplace became one of those initiatives. Bernard Lloyd, founder of Urban Juncture We are focused on creating local opportunity and that is where the injustice has been. Lloyd is the founder of Urban Juncture, a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing disinvested Black urban communities by rebuilding neighborhood commerce around culture and innovation. With a primarily Black demographic, the median household income in the area is $30,979, just half of Chicago’s median income of $61,811.īernard Lloyd is working to change that. Bronzeville is now home to just under 26,000 residents. Since 1970, the city’s population has decreased by 59%. The city was once a center of robust economic, social and artistic advancement on Chicago’s south side. Bronzeville was once an epicenter for arts, culture and commerce, filled with a community of working middle-to-upper-class Black families. One such neighborhood is Bronzeville in Chicago. These days, it is not uncommon to see homes, schools, hospitals, and even swimming pools constructed from shipping containers.Īrmed with this knowledge, urban planners and community developers have joined the movement, using shipping containers to construct temporary and permanent shopping malls that empower Black and Brown entrepreneurs, help fledgling businesses, and revive downtown areas in disenfranchised neighborhoods. This is because the country imports more than it exports and shipping the containers back to Asia would be too expensive for most businesses.įortunately over the last 20 years, builders have been utilizing shipping containers as affordable, environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional constructions. In America especially, many containers sit idle. Of that figure only 6 million are actually in circulation. Currently there are over 17 million shipping containers across the globe being used to transport mass products from one country to the next.
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