Paseo revitalized
Twelve years ago, Craig Travis opened his gift shop Craig's Emporium, now at 3004 Paseo Drive, and to this day, he remembers being the only business in the area with an open door.
"Most of the artists kept their doors locked,” he said.
While his business didn't necessarily suffer from it — Travis said he's always had a wide customer base — Oklahoma City's historic arts district was a virtual ghost town, he said.
Most artists were using the old storefronts as work spaces, and few kept regular hours, making it difficult for retailers to get much traffic.
"It just wasn't conducive to people doing what Paseo means, which is to take a stroll,” Travis said.
Today, things are different. In just over a year, the Paseo has welcomed a handful of new restaurants and retail businesses ranging from a yoga studio and hair salon to a fine dining restaurant and a full-service coffee shop that also serves pizzas and handcrafted ales. At the same time, a growing number of artists have chosen to maintain regular hours to help stimulate street traffic, making it clear that the Paseo is no longer reserved for just artists and art collectors.
With new businesses that cater to everyone from the college-age crowd to Oklahoma City's upper-crust, Paseo tenants say the area has once again been restored to the intentions of its founder G.A. Nichols, who built the arts district in 1929 as Oklahoma City's first shopping district north of downtown.
"It's more of an upscale crowd now,” said Tom Lee, president of the Paseo Art Association and photographer at Old Trinity Gallery, 3000 N Lee Ave. "Artists are innovators in that they usually discover the interesting places and are the first to move in. Whether it's Soho in New York or Santa Fe or the Paseo in Oklahoma City, artists tend to find the neat places. They're the first ones to move in, and then everybody else kind of catches up. Now, we're to the stage where everybody's catching up.”
Kathy Jacobsen, owner of the ladies' boutique Kathy's on Paseo, 2909 Paseo Drive, moved into her shop in 2000 and noticed the same dead business environment as Travis, who also is her son. But in her eight years there, Jacobsen said the area has come a long way, and the result has been beneficial for both retailer and artist.
"I was busy all along, but there weren't that many retail businesses when I came down here,” she said. "(My son) Craig was here, but people would just drive up and shop and leave. Now they'll walk around, and more of the artists are staying open, not all of them like they should, but there's more of them that are.”
Sue Moss Sullivan, a fiber and mixed media artist, is one of four artists who since 1994 have lived in Studio Six, 3021 Paseo Drive, and kept regular hours, which has contributed to the area's communal aspect and benefited the retailers at the same time.
"It's what we choose to do as our business and our studio and how we choose to work,” she said.
Sullivan said there always have been businesses in the Paseo besides the artists, but the past few years have marked a period of growth that has also affected the old neighborhoods that surround the Spanish-inspired adobe villa.
"The number of young people buying houses and redoing them in this area has changed,” she said.
"It's really become a neighborhood again, I think, so that's huge for us.”
Lee said back in the 1980s the Paseo had a high vacancy rate because of the oil bust, which caused many people to go bankrupt, but now occupancy is close to 100 percent.
Today, the Paseo has about 60 artists in 17 galleries or studios and about a dozen businesses at any given time.
Lee added that most of the people who are buying homes in the Paseo neighborhood are young professionals and single mothers.
"I think that's very interesting,” he said. "You wouldn't necessarily think that, but we have a lot of nice bungalow-style homes around 1,000- to 1,500-square-foot range that have a lot of character that you just can't get in new construction. People are attracted to being centrally located and living in a neighborhood that has some charm, not just a nameless subdivision.”
Lesley Rawlinson, one of the owners of the Paseo Grill, 2909 Paseo Drive, which opened just over a year ago, said the area's restaurants also have contributed to its changing demographics because they each attract different customers.
"There's really a mix of neighborhoods around here from upper to lower end, and I think we really filled a niche a little bit on the upper end for Crown Heights, Heritage Hills, those kind of neighborhoods where we get a lot of regular clients,” she said.
Rawlinson added that the addition of Sauced, 2912 Paseo Drive, a coffee shop, pizza cafe and late-night bar that opened earlier this year, has attracted a younger crowd — a group that previously found the area popular. "It's just kind of this rebirth, and people are rediscovering it,” she said.
"I think for that (50- to 60-year-old) age group, it's been a pleasant surprise to come back to this area again. I definitely think the businesses coming in here have helped that.”
Merchants and artists also credit the area's growth to the Paseo Art Association's involvement, which has added events like the First Friday and Saturday Gallery Walks to showcase studio owners' work and manage the annual Paseo Arts Festival. The festival, one of the state's largest, attracts close to 40,000 people over Memorial Day weekend. Next year will be the festival's 32nd year.
But no matter how many businesses open, Lee and other Paseo tenants said the area is first and foremost an arts district, and that will never change.
"I think the landlords realize the artists are the draw for the Paseo,” Lee said. "You don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
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