Hey fam! I thought I would share some behind the scenes of opening my plant shop at the Boxville shipping container market.
In case you are unfamiliar, Boxville is a container market in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago. I will share more about it i an upcoming post.
There is a bi-weekly square market that opened for the summer on Wednesday 6/22. It’s a market where in addition to the businesses that rent space at Boxville (like moi) other small Black owned businesses are selected to pop up.
6/22 was technically my first day open and it was a challenge getting there mainly because my container doesn’t have air conditioning.
I signed my lease June 2nd and wanted to open that week but it definitely took a while getting one very important thing figured out.
The entire front of my shop is made of glass but there isn’t a window that opens. It is also west facing, so it gets ALL THE SUN at a certain point of the day.
So imagine being closed up in a metal box with no air circulation that sits directly in the sun. 😩 It was definitely discouraging to walk into it some days.
It literally felt like it was taking your breath away.
So, I had to come up with a solution that worked but that didn’t totally take away from the vibe I wanted to create.
I of course started researching everything about cooling off a space. I mean EVERYTHING. All the Google and YouTube.
And because I didn’t have a cutout in the container to release the heat generated by traditional window air conditioners, they were not an option.
So I got excited when I came across evaporative air units because they don’t need a window and run off of water & ice. But because Chicago gets pretty humid in the summertime, my research showed that they would not work well here.
I ended up purchasing a portable air conditioner which is a little bulky and takes up some of the window space where I wanted to put a plant stand but it has been 🙌🏾.
I then “drafted” (aka made a stick drawing) a plan to release the heat from the A/C out of the door and sent it to my favorite handyman, my nephew.
He originally didn’t get my drawing 😆 but eventually saw the vision.
To be continued…