As average rents increase in Raleigh, unless smaller commercial spaces get built, financial barriers to entry only go up. But there may be a different option.
The City Market Artist Collective (C-MAC for short) Gallery is a fantastic space with a unique rental structure, I model that I hope becomes more feasible and more popular.
Owner and Curator, Paris Alexander – who is himself a sculptor – leased the gallery space and then sub-leases smaller partitions of space to other artists in the gallery. This co-retail model offers a creative real estate solution that makes high value real estate available to tenants at a lower direct cost.
The “Co-” Model
The “co-” space model is more popular in the office sector where co-working locations like Loading Dock provide smaller office spaces on short-term leases to tenants. The Loading Dock also offers co-warehousing to light industrial and manufacturing tenants.
At The Gallery
C-MAC has about a dozen artists including guest artists and permanent artists in separate artists’ alcoves that can be rented by a single artist or shared by two artists. One of my favorite local artists, Autumn Cobeland aka The Greenway Artist, has a space here.
Benefits of shared space
The shared gallery space provides many benefits. The artists have a retail space that can be separate from their studios and production space. While studio space is essential for every artist, their studio is not always the best place to display and sell their art. Also, with the co-retail model, there is always somebody at the gallery to keep an eye on the shop and help customers. Lastly, the gallery has common space for events and classes.
The future of the “co-” model
While the co-model has a lot of upsides it’s not perfect. One major obstacle with the co-model is that it doesn’t work without the leadership of a master tenant who is willing to lease the entire space and manage the space and facilitate the subleases to the other tenants. That said it is a model I’m very excited to see and one that I hope to see more of in the future.
There are other spaces in Raleigh that employ facets of the “co-” model including The Factory on Hargett Street. The Factory, is a co-manufacturing space, run by The Black Dollar Corp.
One of my favorite developer inspirations is Monte Anderson of Options Real Estate in Dallas. He has utilized the co-retail model to great success on multiple projects including DeSoto Marketplace and Tyler Station. The benefit of this co-retail space is that even though the per-square-foot rent number is high enough for the deal to be financially feasible – there is no such thing as building new “old space”, after all – the total rent check paid by the tenants is quite low because the space is so small and several of the required systems, services, and amenities for the space are shared.
These projects can work even better in partnership with local economic development and business incubator organizations. These “co-” spaces are great opportunities for entrepreneurs to launch and test business ideas. These startup businesses can then go on to expand or pivot with a lower level of risk to the entrepreneur.
Further Reading:
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