Natural Home Earth Mover: Kalli Halpern

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About a year ago, Kalli Halpern faced a tough decision. Crime and homelessness were taking a toll on inner-city East Lansing, Michigan, where she and other small, independent business owners had set up shop. One by one, neighbor merchants were closing their doors. Indeed, the situation for shopkeepers in the area was so bleak, she recalls, that one dispirited independent bookstore owner said he hoped the last business to leave would turn out the lights.

According to Halpern, civic planners had determined that the solution to East Lansing’s inner-city decline was to attract national chain retailers, which would act as cornerstones for the city’s central business district and stimulate business for independent merchants. “That plan truly didn’t work,” Halpern says. “The chain stores settled in, but small shops continued to close.”

For Halpern, this discouraging climate meant she might have to close Trillium, the arts and crafts gallery in which she represented a number of artists, including glassblowers, fiber artists, potters, and ceramic tile makers. Her only options were to hang on, downsize, and find a different space.

Fortunately for the talented local artists who show in her gallery–and for the craftspeople from all over the world whose fair-trade goods she offers–Halpern chose to find a new space. Ironically, she says, it turned out to be a storefront that had been storage space for a national chain: the mega-retailer Gap.

Her new 500-square-foot space, which she describes as a “long shoebox,” is only a third the size of her previous store. “You can see everything at once,” she says. “It’s a challenge.” To accommodate the smaller space, she had to return some artists’ work, but she’s philosophical about it. Many of the artists she’d represented had outgrown her ability to represent them–which is a good thing, she says. What’s important, she says, is that the new space is enough to keep her afloat.

  • Published on Jan 1, 2005
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