Kate Vrijmoet: Transforming a Neighborhood
Image: necessary & sufficient coffee
It is not hyperbole to state that Leadership Eastside changed the trajectory of my life by providing me with insights, skills and scaffolding I needed to navigate the change I continually initiated. As a lifelong artist, I have historically been rewarded for creating discomfort, my primary aesthetic. Discomfort as an aesthetic worked in my art practice, however, as you might imagine, it often played out with disastrous results in real life.
From the first day of Leadership Eastside orientation, the lessons were immediate, ongoing, and abundant. My global personal insight gleaned from the program is that the program provided me with a framework and a vocabulary for the work I had already been doing. This allowed me to have consistency in my processes, and navigate the heat generated by social change. The program gave me a strong context from which I am able to apply my experience and education in art and social change practices.
Shortly after graduating, I moved to Chicago where I purchased the first floor of a triplex, in a tiny, shut down business district in a historic neighborhood. This business district served the community for nearly 200 years providing amenities that came and went, as social needs changed. At the time I purchased the property, the neglect was obvious. Windows were soaped out, some rooftops were caved in, businesses had long been shuttered. Combine that with the tagging that was visible everywhere and the warnings I received to say out of the alleys due to gang activity.
The kicker for me, however, having been part of the Leadership Eastside class navigating Trump’s first presidency and the fear and vitriol it inspired, was hearing from neighbors that they were walking other community members’ kids to school to be shielded from ICE breaking up their families.
I know from my art and social change practice that activating a public space drives out questionable and criminal behavior, and makes for a healthier and safe community. And I had come to understand through Leadership Eastside that my race offered me systemic privileges. I lacked the power to affect national change, but I could do more than nothing at all.
I walked the neighborhood and asked everyone I passed what amenity they would like in their neighborhood. 100% told me: “coffee shop.” And so, I decided to turn the storefront of my art studio into a neighborhood coffee shop. By applying what I had learned from Trouble Coffee, I created a take-out window café where neighbors were lined up on the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder, while they waited in line for their order. I did this so that neighbors could come together without an agenda, to connect and touch each other’s humanity. My personal measure of success presented itself a year after opening when a neighbor told me they had watched someone pass by their home daily on route to work and never met them, but after five years, they finally met in line at my coffee shop.
Two years after opening, tagging was gone, crime was way down, and three new women-owned businesses opened on my block. Two of them are retail businesses and compliment my café. Three more years on and the second block has also been revitalized with more local business ventures. The city provided a “parklet” seating area at the curb of our businesses, further enhancing the community experience.
Image: VHT Studios
In 2023, I opened a second location in the neighborhood where I live because it had a 50% retail vacancy rate. I have been working on mobilizing community businesses to establish a neighborhood identity and start our own Chamber of Commerce.
My cafes have a focus on the pillars of sustainability: ecological, economic, and social. As such we are at zero waste in both locations, and we have inspired neighborhoods to create their own composting programs. We are the first company in the world to become Oceanic Global Blue Action Verified, among the inaugural 100 US companies to become Living Wage for US certified, and partnered with the Shedd Aquarium in the Let’s Shedd Plastic program. And recently I was invited to speak at a city council meeting on how businesses like mine can implement sustainability practices of their own.
There is so much more. Suffice to say that understanding how to diagnose a system, build a container that can tolerate the heat brought by social change, and mobilize community members to continue to act has been a direct result of what I experienced in Leadership Eastside.
Special shout out to the Class of 2018, especially to director Karin Duval, and Toads: Rachel Ramirez Smith and Kalika Curry. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without your brilliance and loving support.
Thank you.
Kate
