Industry
Community Engagement
Client
Family Bodega
Project Type
Entrepreneurship
Building Community Out of a Vacant Bodega
Specials on C is a physical prototype exploring the use of vacant space for community engagement.
Vacant storefronts represent wasted potential: underutilized real estate that could serve as community infrastructure for creative experimentation. My co-founder and I identified a former bodega in Alphabet City and prototyped a new spatial model, transforming the defunct "Family Deli" into a temporary venue for community members to test entrepreneurial, artistic, and experimental concepts without traditional barriers to entry. Rather than optimizing for revenue extraction, I designed an operational framework that prioritized low overhead and maximum accessibility. The goal was to facilitate as many diverse activations as possible while keeping annual operating costs under $10,000. This constraint forced us to create lightweight systems for space booking, event coordination, and turnover logistics that didn't require dedicated staff or complex infrastructure.
System Design & Operational Model
I established flexible spatial configurations and booking protocols that could accommodate wildly different use cases: from art exhibitions to product launches, live music to interactive installations, maker workshops to pop-up retail. The operational model balanced structure with creative freedom. We handled the physical space, basic utilities, and scheduling coordination while giving hosts autonomy over their event design and execution. This approach attracted a diverse range of creators: established artists testing new formats, emerging brands launching products, educators prototyping workshops, musicians experimenting with intimate venues. By removing traditional gatekeeping (security deposits, minimum revenue requirements, exclusive contracts), we enabled people who would never access conventional retail or gallery space to manifest their ideas in a physical context and learn from real community engagement.
Outcomes & Impact
Within one year, Specials on C facilitated 34 events with widely varied participants, from RAE transforming the space into an art installation to GO EAST building a holiday marketplace for independent makers, from Crush Distance hosting secret shows to Emilie Baltz and Carla Diana creating music through ice cream consumption. The diversity of activations validated the core hypothesis: when you radically lower access barriers and operational friction, communities will self-organize creative experimentation. The project demonstrated that vacant commercial space could be repurposed as civic infrastructure through intentional design of the operational layer, not just the physical space, but the systems for booking, coordination, and knowledge transfer between successive activations. Though Specials on C eventually returned to vacancy, it proved a scalable model for transforming underutilized urban space into platforms for community creativity and entrepreneurial prototyping.
