portland retailers flourish in rent-free, collaborative environment

This is the third installment in Neighborhood Notes’ series on indie business collaboration through space sharing.

There’s something exceptional happening in the old Pacific Hardware and Steel building on NW Nicolai Street.

More than a century after its construction, Portland-based producers of distinctive, period-specific lighting fixtures and furnishings, Schoolhouse Electric, took up residence in the massive, four-story red brick warehouse, inviting a few friends to help them fill the 103,172-square-foot building.

The old edifice adjacent to the railroad tracks has housed many businesses over the years, but following a comprehensive 2009 renovation, Schoolhouse Electric purchased the property, dubbed it the Schoolhouse Factory, and has since ushered in the most dynamic period in the history of the nationally recognized historic locale.

Founder and owner Brian Faherty has carefully constructed an environment in hopes of making his on-the-edge-of-town, industrial location “a destination.”

To do so, Faherty invited other local, independently owned businesses to share the space, leveraging their audience, products and services to create a collaborative work environment that provides an exceptional experience for customers and collaborators alike.

Leveraging Audience

As Faherty envisioned his future company headquarters, he knew he wanted a coffee shop on-site, not only to create an ambiance and service his own employees, but also to draw customers to the slightly out-of-the-way destination.

Din Johnson, the owner and head roaster at Ristretto Roasters, was attracted to not only the space but also what he calls "the last industrial frontier" and a neighborhood full of artists.

But being an industrial frontier, Faherty understood that the location was not a high foot traffic area, like Ristretto’s other locations. With his collaborative vision in mind, and against the advice of one of his financial advisers, Faherty proposed to Johnson that rent would be free.

"We were looking to leverage his audience as well by putting us in the same building,” Faherty explains. “What we were going to get out of the deal in return for not charging rent was, potentially, customers and just people who were going to come into the space."

Faherty recognized that, aside from setting up shop in a somewhat idle area, Johnson also invested six figures in the build out of the corner coffee shop.

As it stands now, the nascent partnership is still an experiment and the situation may change depending on the results. Faherty alludes to the fact that Schoolhouse will probably charge for utilities in the future, "but in the beginning, we're not charging any rent and we're not charging any utilities because we want to give them a chance to get in and get the word out to their audience, and our audience, that they're here," he justifies.

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Read more about the other collaborations, like independent designers Anna Mara and Reed LaPlant as well as Egg Press, happening in the Schoolhouse Factory on Neighborhood Notes.

want to cut your business' rent, utilities + payroll? share your space

It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to realize that burritos and beers go together.

And many Portland purveyors of food and beverage have figured out ways to creatively share business spaces. Our first list of examples was concerned with those sharing due natural proximity and complementary offerings: There are the bars that allow cart food, the pizza makers that deliver to bars, and the Mexican restaurant that serves other bars and shares a bathroom with a strip joint.

But, another group of inventive Portlanders are thinking about complementary offerings in a different way, breeding strange and even more interesting bedfellows.

Have you ever considered how you could share your retail space with other businesses? Could you save considerably on your overhead, whether that’s rent, utilities or even employees?

And if you were to enter into such a situation, what kind of agreement should you have in place?

Let a few Portland business owners doing just this explain.

The Completely Shared Retail Space

The owners of three independently owned businesses—Salvage Works, Solabee Flowers and Boys' Fort—affectionately refer to their shared space as The Fort.

“Each business is an independent entity, but we share one retail space completely seamlessly. So, all three of our stuff is mixed in the room," says Alea Joy of Solabee Flowers.

And while those businesses include a seller or reclaimed and vintage building materials, a pair of floral designers, and a men’s retailer that supports a collective of more than 60 artists and craftspeople, "The ascetic is seamless,” Joy describes. “It works as a business model because essentially what we've created is a worker-owned collective. We kind of just stumbled into it.”

The owners of each individual business have known each other more than a year now and each has collaborated with the others in the past. All three came together because, "We were looking for a place to move, and we all really liked working together, and we all are dedicated to the neighborhood of Kenton," Joy explains.

Across town on NW 23rd Avenue, another pair of indie business—one an optical retailer that’s been locally owned for more than a century and the other a team of jewelry designers still in their nascent years—are also gracefully sharing a single retail space.

Touting “curated artisan attire,” The Specialty Store came into existence when Sticks & Stones Accessories and the long-standing eyewear professionals Reynolds Optical decided to collaborate, renaming and revamping the offerings of the once optical-only shop to include singular, high-quality items from around the world.

Sticks & Stones’ Art Director Marc Ishida says his company has always looked up to Reynolds because of its independence and longevity. “In my opinion, that's a pretty big milestone in this community to have an independently owned business that's been around that long," Ishida says.

Each business had a mutual appreciation for the other and saw an opportunity because Reynolds had plenty of extra room in its northwest location. The goal is “to offer something to Portland that you can't get anywhere else, which is why it's called Specialty Store—finding things you can't find anywhere else in Portland or even the West Coast for a lot of these brands,” Ishida explains.

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Find out more about the benefits of and advice for sharing your business' space on Neighborhood Notes.

indie business collaborations : sharing beers, bathrooms + burritos

Attention entrepreneurs: Many of you have great ideas for new businesses. Some of you even have the wherewithal to navigate the technical, legal and governmental landscapes, and a lot are capable of gathering the funds and support needed to get it all off the ground.

But, plenty of you may run into a few stumbling blocks along the way. There’s the obvious difficulty of finding the perfect, and affordable, space in the ideal neighborhood surrounded by the right businesses. And then there's the matter of the right amenities, products and marketing, among other business challenges.

A host of innovative Portland business people are solving these problems in inventive ways by collaborating with other businesses through space sharing.

Neighborhood Notes has dug up a variety of ways local businesses are sharing spaces and shaving expenses to give the next wave of indie entrepreneurs some fresh ideas on how to collaborate and thrive.

Sharing With Your Neighbors Makes Sense

As you should’ve learned in kindergarten, sharing is a good thing. And for a lot of Portlanders in the food industry, it just makes sense.

For Prost!, a bar that’s driven more by German beer than its food offerings, it was a natural decision for owner Dan Hart to design a restaurant and deck area that would not only coexist but also reinforce the neighboring Mississippi Marketplace cart pod.

“We’ll allow people to bring in cart food, we just want people to drink our beer,” Hart spells out.

As both the bar and the carts came to fruition around the same time, his goal was to create a neighborhood bar and community space. So, why not include the adjacent food vendors?

Taking advantage of the resources at his disposal, Hart established an open door policy with the carts that share the same lot. Although Hart admits that he might sell more food if the agreement didn’t exist, he stresses community and thinks it’s been “mutually beneficial,” plus he relishes the idea that everyone can get exactly what they want and still enjoy a quality German beer—his true focus.

“The whole idea was born out of [the fact that] I didn’t want to eat bratwurst and kraut every day,” Hart says, but he still wanted everyone in the neighborhood to enjoy the patio (and hopefully a beer).

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Read about more Portland businesses that are creatively sharing space, amenities, food, and booze on Neighborhood Notes.