New shops help build presence of Vassar Street retailing

Reno's Vassar Street, with boutique stores and art galleries housed in tastefully renovated older buildings, has always exuded a distinct charm, attracting locals and visitors even many from the Bay area.

Now new retailers are increasing the critical mass of stores in the neighborhood.

Des Idees, Concepts by Fine N Funky and Town & Country Furs have been attracting customers for almost two decades with their kitchen and bath accessories, and clothes and fashion merchandise and gift items.

Art Dog and Grace, under a new owner since 2000, is doing the same with its furniture, clothes, Southeast Asian imports and tobacco and hemp natural remedies.

It's now the turn of four stores the Pepper Tree, the Lucky Star, Camp Round-Up and Medio Mundo that have opened in the last six months to join in.

In fact, the two buildings that now house the Pepper Tree and Medio Mundo haven't been commercial before, though the area is zoned commercial.

And that's huge, says Bonnie Grellman, owner of Des Idees, who has seen the evolution of the street for the last 25 years and is pleased to see the resurgence.

The charm is the street itself with its old neighborhood ambience, say the newcomers.

Harriette Allison, owner of the Lucky Star, a Western Americana gallery and Camp Round-Up that features vintage home decor, started searching for the right location three years back.

She wanted to open a shop in an older neighborhood of Reno where, she says, people have been used to boutique shopping.

And as one who had been into collecting cowboy, Indian and Mexican artifacts and decorating condos with these items for several years before opening her shops,Vassar Street seemed to be a perfect place.

She sees the corridors between Wells Avenue and South Virginia Street and from California Street to Holcomb Avenue ready to offer destination shopping to Reno consumers and visitors.

Emma Sepulveda and Allyson Adams, owners of Medio Mundo, a women's art gallery that opened two weeks back, were influenced by the same rationale.

The store includes a studio at the back where Adams works on her textile designs.

It also sells paintings, photographic images, handmade books and jewelry.

Both thought the existing shops on Vassar Street were each unique, and Medio Mundo an outlet for women artists would be a good fit.

"It's such a rich little street and part of the uniqueness is that it is a neighborhood," Adams says.

Reno, she adds, is becoming a destination where people want a more enriched cultural experience and this street offers people that experience.

The Pepper Tree, which sells American Indian art, Southwest furniture, candles, hats and gifts, moved from a Wells Avenue location to its current 157 Vassar St.

address.

Vassar Street continues to be attractive for real estate investors too.

With an investment of more than $1 million, including her inventory, in the two properties totaling 2,290 square feet,Allison hopes that the properties will appreciate.

The area could become Reno's answer to Salt Lake City's Utah, Sugarhouse Shopping District, she says, if the city provides help such as installing lamp posts along the street and fixing the curbs and sidewalks.

And that would make her investment more profitable.

Investors are nibbling around an 1,800- square-property at 150 Vassar St., with retail facing Vassar and a residential duplex in the back facing Wheeler Street.

The property is listed at $379,900.

"It's a desirable location it's pretty convenient, pretty central, it has older style homes and lends itself well to a art gallery or a gift shop," says Chris Vail, whose Vail and Associates Realty listed the property."But part of it is just from other businesses being there theoretically, if somebody went to one of those shops they probably would go to the others."

And that's precisely what the Vassar Street customers do stroll around and drop by all the shops.

Carole Hall of San Francisco was visiting Reno one recent weekend and did not miss a chance to come to Vassar Street.After visiting some of the other stores, she stopped by at the Lucky Star.

"I'm so tired of the malls," she says."The shops here are completely different from the Bay area.Whether it's the Des Idees, Concepts by Fine N Funky, each one is unique.

It's the personal touch, too."

The relationship with their customers is indeed personal, say the shop owners.

Every store in the neighborhood is owner operated, so customers deal with the person who owns it.

Some have been coming to Des Idees, for instance, for the last 25 years.

Though each of the stores does its own marketing, which includes Allison's advertising in American Cowboy magazine, publication of individual brochures and individual radio ads, there is also a collaborative effort to reach out to the customers who frequent the Vassar Street stores.

Grellman sends out a quarterly newsletter on behalf of all the shops on the street to customers.

Ann Armbruster, a marketing consultant who provides input to Allison and recently to Grellman too, doesn't perceive the Vassar Street owners as traditional merchants.

The owners, she says, have a different vision.

They are saying,Armbruster says,"Here's to our Reno.

Here's what I've to offer to you things that I love, things that I discover, things that I really enjoy, sharing with you a whole cultural heritage."