San Jose is welcoming several new businesses downtown on a temporary basis.
The city’s pop-up retail program aims to revitalize blighted areas, fill vacant storefronts, and give young entrepreneurs a chance to run a shop.
Six brand new businesses have opened up in vacant storefronts on Post Street, selling everything from stationery to stickers. The businesses are all pop-ups.
The owners get to try having a brick-and-mortar location temporarily.
“They presented it to us on a silver platter. They made it so easy, so convenient. The funding and the low-cost barrier to entry. Without that I don’t think we would have done this at all,” said Eugenie Ooi, who runs Neko-Oi.
And that’s the idea: to bring retail and shoppers into areas where there isn’t much.
San Jose along with the Downtown Association and a group called Moment, launched the program. Originally, they built their own stalls in a San …