PLACEMAKING | How Entrepreneurs are Revitalizing Downtowns
Positive development begets positive community change in a virtuous cycle
Written By Satchel Walton
This is the first of a three-part series on Southern entrepreneurs catalyzing place through restaurants, retail, and rejuvenation.
Graham, North Carolina, and its once sleepy Main Street might not be where you’d expect to see innovation in placemaking and community-building. Formerly a small town in an area focused on textiles and manufacturing, its population has grown rapidly as suburbs have sprouted up around Alamance County, about halfway between Durham and Greensboro. Recently, though, one coffee shop has served as a model for how small Southern business owners can help transform their area.
A block down Main Street from the courthouse is PRESS Coffee+Crepes+Cocktails, a shop that has helped to breathe new life into Downtown Graham and bring some foot traffic to the stretch. In a former newspaper building (hence the name), the shop serves up more than just food inspired by European and Southern traditions.
“PRESS was a downtown revitalization project disguised as a business. When people saw this strange navy blue building with a weird coffee shop-creperie finding success, it made their crazy idea seem a lot less crazy,” co-founder Jason Cox wrote in an email.
He and his partner Brett DeVries opened Press in the summer of 2016. Since then, the main drag in the seat of Alamance County has experienced a mini-boom. Around 20 new businesses have opened in Downtown Graham, including restaurants, retail, and office space.
Cox says that his business’s success has also led the community to change its perceptions of the possible, catalyzing a citizen-led movement to reform parking requirements, building codes, and housing policies.
Graham is a town still rife with Americana, including a twenty-five-foot statue reminiscent of the famous photo of a woman and sailor kissing in Times Square at the end of World War II, which the town displayed for three years. While appealing to a distinctly twenty-first-century crowd of young professionals, Press reminds of a time when America’s small-town Main Streets were bustling with small shops.
Both food and small, local retail play crucial roles in placemaking, defined as giving an area a distinctive, memorable character different from every other neighborhood. On the surface, having local restaurants is good for an area’s tax revenues. It also appeals to tourists. But this is a goal to aspire to for more general reasons, too. After all, the point of a thriving community is at least partially to bring people together in third places and have a particular local charm beyond simply being another place to live. It is telling that small businesses are one of the few institutions that a majority of Americans have confidence in.
Still, opening a restaurant is a notoriously difficult endeavor, with low profit margins and high volatility. But for those who can succeed, small, local eateries are a crucial part in building a unique sense of place. DeVries and Cox have been so successful that they opened another location in Durham and have been asked to anchor other developments in places like Raleigh.
“Every place’s story of revitalization begins with beans (coffee), beer, and bakery. So we figured we would add the beans and an interesting food option to attract the next ones,” Cox wrote.
It’s hard enough to be a small-scale entrepreneur. It’s even more difficult to build something that consciously tries to be an asset to a community rather than just a profit-making machine—and still make enough to keep the lights on. Kudos to those like Cox and DeVries who can do it.
Satchel Walton is the Mencken Publishing Fellow on Urban Development. Follow him at @SatchelWalton