Experience Matters, Another Way To Fill The Storefront

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash

See the picture below. You probably are familiar with this type of arcade game stores from your childhood memories.

They are amongst a paradigm of shops that offer interactive experiences.

“What do they have to do with our local streetscape?”, you might be wondering.

Consumer habits changed by e-commerce

In recent years, as business owners seek new ways to attract shoppers in the era of e-commerce, more and more self-proclaimed museums (art galleries) rise across Asia and the United States. They offer a different kind of interactive experience that appeals to customers, which not only creates virtual buzz on social media but also substantial traffics on their brick-and-mortar locations. Their business models are to give visitors a “Willy Wonka” experience and sell them chocolate bars at the same time (on a much smaller scale compare to Disneyland or Hershey’s park).

Stores knocked down by the coronavirus crisis

According to DCist, there are at least 325 brick-and-mortar businesses that have closed permanently alone with 100 more shuttered temporarily in Washington D.C. since the first lockdown in March 2020.

Many businesses that used to thrive on disposable income and big crowds including bars, restaurants, clubs, and theaters were beaten up by this pandemic crisis. As office workers have disappeared from the streets, many high-end shopping-and-dining-focused neighborhoods have also been transformed. The remaining survivors are those establishments that serve a community’s most basic needs, such as grocery stores or corner pharmacies.

Art as Experience; Experience as Art

“After everything goes back to normal, will experience still matter to our shoppers?” or “Will business models that tie to the experiences help our stores, streets, and neighborhoods maximize their versatility?” I cannot stop pondering these questions.

Pausing here, I feel compelled to bring “Art” into this discussion.

Oftentimes people have this misconception that “Art” is expensive: the authentic ones can only be found in accredited museums or at the Sotheby’s auction. “Art” is the hobby that only the rich can afford, and for art dealers to get lucrative commissions. Overall, “Art is a nice option to have” but not within the necessity category. Bill Gates even once argues against people who want to donate money to museums just because they need to extend another wing for exhibition. He also questioned if a huge amount of money flowing into art businesses, galleries, or museums is even moral. Those are all valid points and convincing arguments, but they are only part of the spectrum that cannot represent Art as a whole.

Ever since art has materialized in the history of human civilization, Art was not expensive, it certainly does not need to carry a price tag in our modern society. It is an evolution of our aggregated experience (1) and recently found to be an investment for our wellbeing and our society as a whole (2).

While I have skipped aspects of why collected experiences can be considered art and details of how art benefits our society and our wellbeing. I want to share my imagination on how we could use a small portion of the abandoned stores to shape our collective (streets/pedestrian) experiences that benefit our community and neighborhoods.

These pop-up “stores“ illustrated above might operated by vendors, landlords, non-profit or even government institutes. The goal is regain viable streets and enhance visitors experience as a catalyst for future economic activities. The fist shop uses green walls as exhibits than as actual artworks. This not only avoid unnecessary VOC content, but could also prevent vandalizing (as mural painting often has certain subjective topic). The second shop is more of an education exhibit. It helps visitors understand the composting process, how to make healthy soil or importance of the healthy soil. The third shop demonstrate a neighborhood lounge, a temporary rest stop. Studies has shown involvement in art activities including listen to music, reading literatures or gazing at art works could improve our well beings in a measurable level.

Mi Casa es Su Casa; Mi Museo es Su Museo

Most of the pop-up museums (listed in the table above) require a bigger area than 2500 square feet and seem to be too costly to build a fanciful space. However, for creating a continuous street experience, we only need the front space of 5–10 feet of each vacated store. Similar to the concept of internal streets at shopping malls, for visitors, developing a continuous activity experience on both sides of the streets is crucial for making our street life viable.

Use this map as an example, not every store was open on the M Street in Georgetown or along the Connecticut Avenue. These pop-up stores (prototype) could temporarily fill the gap before vacated stores getting long-term tenants. This is not only maintaining a continuous pedestrian experience, draw more visitors (without destination) on the streets, but also eliminates the chance of growing blight spots that drag down locations. Moreover, visitors could gain informative experiences that might benefit their health and further gain familiarity with the surrounding neighborhoods.

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If you find this idea interesting, follow me (Hsiao Wei) on Medium and check out other similar articles below!

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• If you are interested in reading more references or illustrations in this related article, check out here.