Sandwiched between a metal-sided industrial building and the newly opened Midtown Linear Park, the Wonderly’s building on Cornell Street in Kingston has long been a fixture of the local landscape with its distinctive breeze block facade, the inside a mystery to most.
At various times a skating rink, a bowling alley, and, most recently, a drapery factory, the building’s 10,000-square-foot interior will once again be open to the public in its new incarnation as Red Owl Collective, a multi-stall vendor mall combining antiques, art, and artisanal goods that soft launches on Friday, August 11.
Cindy Hoose, longtime antiques dealer and founder of the Red Owl Collective, currently has two stalls at Kingston Consignments and has sold at other spots like Newburgh Vintage Emporium in the past.
For market research, Hoose drove to nearly every antique mall within a 100-mile radius of Kingston to explore different models. There will be no work exchange for vendors at Red Owl, customer service and check-out will be handled by employees, whose salaries are covered as part of overhead included in the stall rental. Hoose is charging a flat fee of $5 per square foot per month, with scalable stall sizes ranging from 8x10 to 12x12 and 14x16.
“That’s the beauty of it—you have no utilities to pay for and you don't have to be there,” Hoose says. “That was always the most appealing part of selling in vendor malls for me—that you could just go and do the fun thing, which is buying and selling. Of course, you have to be serious about what you're doing and see it as a job, not just a side gig or a hobby, but I think it’s a great model and a great opportunity.”
Hoose laughs at the irony of being on the other side of things now, the “not fun” side. Still, she sees this as an evolution of her own vendor trajectory and seems to be genuinely enjoying fielding questions, vetting vendors, delegating tasks, mapping out stalls, and generally overseeing the chaos that is the final sprint to Red Owl’s soft opening on August 11.
As for the timing and the demand, if driving all over New York and Connecticut taught her anything, it’s that there is a need for more antique malls. “They all have waiting lists—there are just more vendors than there are spaces,” Hoose says. “So I think people are really excited for a new space to open.”
Plumb Perfect
The plan wasn’t always to open a multi-vendor antique mall. When Hoose and her husband, John Parker of JSP Home Services, first closed on the Cornell Street property in January of this year, the idea was to move Parker’s entire plumbing and HVAC warehouse and operations base into the building.
But as they spent more time in the building, it seemed a shame to them to turn the wide-open space into offices with no public-facing component. For Hoose, with her background in antique dealing, a vendor mall seemed like a viable option, and the couple began to explore different business models.
Like the well-oiled machine of marriage, they compromised. Hoose would take the sprawling street-side space, with the entire back half of the building and its accompanying loading docks to house JSP’s warehouse. The massive parking lot, which spans from Cornell Street all the way to Field Court and beyond, is another big asset.
“After I'm up and running, I’ll be thinking about events out here,” Hoose says of the lot. “Vendor markets, some kind of food trucks—I'm not sure yet, but I just feel like the timing, with the new parking lot across the street and all the beautiful new restaurants and breweries that are opening up, is great.” Hoose has imagined projecting films on the broad side of the building adjacent to the rail trail, and she’s submitted walls to O+ for mural consideration.
Gearing Up
With just a few days to the soft launch, the two-level interior of Red Owl Collective is abuzz with activity. Entering from either Cornell Street or the side lot, you arrive at a carpeted, L-shaped lobby of sorts that overlooks the lower vendor floor, which Hoose says used to be a “sea of sewing machines.” (The original extension cords still hang from the ceiling like punctuation throughout the room.) A new ramp leading from the lobby down to the main vendor floor will make the entire space ADA accessible, and multiple loading docks allow for easy carrying in and carrying out of larger pieces. On the main floor, peg board walls are going up while, in finished areas, vendors roll paint on in hues from baby pink to olive green and blaze orange.
“I'm taking my time with this top part, because I'm not quite sure what the vision is,” Hoose says about the L-shaped lobby. “Maybe I’ll pull from all the booths and create some sort of pretty environment with plants. This other area could be some kind of workshop. If someone had a tin can camper they could set it up over there and sell coffee out of it.” As she speaks, Hoose points to different areas in the L-shaped “upstairs.”
As construction continues and space gets reallocated, the total number of booths continues to shift, but Hoose is confident that the number will be over 40. At least two dozen spaces are already rented to tenants ranging from Exit Nineteen, which also has a storefront in the Stockade District, to veteran antique dealers to local makers.
“The information in the application is my first vetting process, then they come to meet me, and we walk around the space together,” Hoose says of her curatorial process. “It's a balance. I don't want it to be too precious, and I don't want it to be just one person’s style or one price point. My vision of [the Collective] is that it's a beautiful, clean, organized environment for people to create their own stores. So the expectation is that it's not just plop it and leave it. It's come and set it up in a beautiful way, curate it, and come every week to refresh it.”
Red Owl Collective opens with a soft launch on Friday, August 11. Stay tuned to the Instagram account for hours going forward. To become a vendor, apply online.
