It’s the middle of the week, we all could use a little boost to get us to the weekend, so welcome to Wednesday🔥🔥takes, where we offer … Let’s call it constructive criticism. Or big ideas we’d like to see in Flint. Or maybe just a rant about something. If you have an idea and would like to write one, pitch it to team@flintdaily.news.
A natural part of getting older is missing the many random businesses that come and go in our lifetimes. For me, undoubtedly, my biggest business void resulted from the closing of Colette’s Vintage in 2023.
Conservatively, about ⅔ of the decor in my house originally came from Colette’s. That percentage would be higher if the feral dog I rescued from the streets of Flint didn’t repay me for my hospitality by chewing up my two beloved matching 1970s armchairs I’d found there and had to throw out as a result of her nervous destruction habits before she became more civilized.
It was a go-to place for finding birthday presents for my many weird friends who normal store-bought presents wouldn’t impress. I could also count on creepy Raggedy Ann toys in the stalls there (seriously, SO MANY Raggedy Ann dolls) to chase my son with. He to this day as a young man has kept his real phobia of all things Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Collete’s always gave me ample opportunities to annoy him. Even when I didn’t need anything in particular, it was a great way to kill time on a lazy weekend, with an added element of adventure if it was raining and you had to avoid stepping into one of the many buckets employees would put out in the random sections of the store where leaks appeared in the roof.
The concept was simple. They had a gigantic, open indoor space (formerly a Harley-Davidson store in Burton) and a huge parking lot and lawn. They had stalls throughout the store and, on weekends all summer, outside lining the parking lot. Vendors would rent spaces and come and sell crap, ranging from straightforward used stuff, to upcycled creations, to handmade items like candles, clothes, and art pieces. Most of it you rarely needed but you often wanted for unexplainable reasons. Sometimes, I’d go in search of a table to put stuff on. Sometimes, it would be for a table I wanted to drill holes into to turn into a lamp. Or a table I wanted to decoupage with pages from a book (yeah, I decoupage sometimes like a real alpha male). The point is, I could wander around in there for an hour or so and almost always leave with some little thing that made me happy or inspired me to try something creative, and it has been hard to find a nearby replacement for that feeling at the scale and affordability that Colette’s offered.
I wasn’t alone in my adoration for the place, either. Colette’s was always packed, with shoppers and with vendors. And despite some … uh … awkwardness with how the business ended, the model itself seemed to be viable at least in terms of creating an attraction that people liked, would travel to, and spend money at.
This isn’t just me fixating on and overly romanticizing one place that I liked, either. Vintage clothes and furniture, physical media like records and DVDs, and other things we wrote off as relics of the past have made comebacks. People have begun to recognize some of the flaws of our modern digitized life, namely that we never really “own” our digital music or film. (Sidenote: Wait until you learn about my dreams of making Flint. Daily. a print newspaper). Also, and I can’t say this strongly enough, we’re all effing broke, so we NEED thrift stores.
Dixieland Flea Market just outside of Genesee County has been a successful draw for more than 50 years. Nearby vintage and antique festivals in places like Midland and Davisburg draw thousands of people each summer. In Sweden, an entire mall – and malls in and of themselves were thought to be relics – devoted only to secondhand shopping is thriving.
How does any of this relate to Flint? It doesn’t. But it could.
Since 2014, Flint has had a dream property for this type of business. The former Flint Farmers’ Market, located between the Flint River and Robert T. Longway Boulevard, is actually perfectly equipped for a large-scale vintage market. Arguably it was even more perfect prior to the old enclosed pavilion falling into disrepair. But that building has been razed, and what remains is still a large developable plot of land with the following attributes:
- Proximity to downtown Flint;
- Next door neighbors who are another vintage shopper’s dream, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore;
- College students love vintage (even though they don’t like it when you point out that they’re ripping off all of our 1990s looks) and University of Michigan-Flint is walking distance to the location;
- A building to house a big vintage market doesn’t even have to be nice, the bar is low – just be nicer than a leaky old Harley-Davidson store in Burton and that’s a massive improvement;
- It is near I-475, making it an easily accessible location for tourists;
- There is space on the property for a building, parking, and customizable property to setup outdoor spaces for vendors.
Hell, it even has a dispensary next door. Which was a dealbreaker when the Flint Children’s Museum was eyeing that property, but seems downright complementary for a vintage marketplace.
Whether the vintage and thrift scene is of interest to you or not, these types of businesses are relatively low-maintenance compared to other developments, the ReStore is a complementary business already adjacent to the site, there is an appetite for that type of business here based on the successes of similar businesses elsewhere in the county, people who are into that culture travel sometimes lengthy distances to either shop at or sell items they’ve salvaged at these types of businesses, and mainly, it is just unique.
I don’t love outsiders, but I’m trying to be better about that. Flint needs more draws, it needs more things that can serve needs and interests of people who live here while also bringing new people and consumers into the city, and this would be a creative, relatively easy-to-execute use of that property.
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