"To see anybody do a really good job in developing a storefront property is a great boon to the psychology of the hamlet," said David Lamb, chairman of the association's design committee.
Historically, many traditional services models required a storefront property or public office.
It could be a very smart play, as Payvment could help make it easy for Intuit's small businesses finance suite customers to launch storefronts on social properties like Facebook.
On H Street, Pamela Johnson, an African-American who owns a small storefront building, said her property tax bill had more than tripled in the three and a half years since the city began building a streetcar system that she said she never wanted.
More than 1,000 people showed up to nonviolently protest police brutality, but by nightfall some people in the crowd had begun smashing storefront windows and vandalizing property.
Volunteer groups pitched in, too, behind the goal of bringing the town back from empty storefronts and sliding property values.
A 10-month-a-year infusion like the one in Cape May, a 10-minute drive away, is viewed as the only sure way to revive vacant storefronts and raise property values, which lag far behind those in nearby Avalon and Stone Harbor, rival beach communities where houses routinely sell for $400,000.
Most unusual, the park-like property features a fanciful storefront facade complete with a bank, a store, a cafe, sidewalks, a street sign and street lamps.
In March 2009, Apple Inc. also withdrew from its leasing agreement, and less than a month later it signed an agreement to develop a new storefront in the Clybourn Corridor on property bounded by North Avenue, Halsted Street and Clybourn Avenue.
On Monday there were plenty of heads turned toward the storefront of Chashama, the organization that transforms vacant properties into art spaces.
