MCLENNAN COUNTY, Texas — Cultivate 712 is a building where friends can come together to paint or you can walk through to shop. But it is so much more than that, it’s also a home to local artists and entrepreneurs, but in just a few short weeks they will have to find a new home.
- Cultivate 712 is described as a downtown hub for all things art, featuring local businesses, artists, and creatives.
- Artist, and vendors expressed the bittersweet feeling of Cultivate 712 closing.
- Debbie Wright explains rising costs and inflation made it difficult to sustain the current rent and operations.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
“It is going to be really hard for us to find homes for our artists and continue on,”Debbie Wright said.
Walking down Austin Avenue, you’ll find Cultivate 712.
A gallery of creativity traveling along the walls of a 118-year-old building, it’s been a space for local artists to showcase their art, and for local vendors.
“This is renewed co, this is my clothing company, so most of this stuff behind me is vintage,” Abby Williams said.
Abby Williams has had a space in the back room at Cultivate 712 for about a year, but as a Waco native, Williams has been coming here for the past seven years, and after she heard the news the building would be closing, not only is she closing her business, she’s also losing a small piece of her heart.
“I’m not going to stop being an artist, not getting a physical reminder of this space is definitely going to be something I grieve,” Williams said.
The reason for the gallery’s closure, the rent doubled.
“With raising costs and inflation, it’s just so hard to keep up, our rent is going up, as a lot of places downtown are,” Wright said.
I did reach out to the building owner for comment- but they were not able to get back with me.
“I walked in here, it was immediately inspired by beautiful art, you know, it I needed a little bit of that inspiration, I had it right here,” Publisher Kennisha Griffin said.
Kennisha Griffin has her own publishing company on the second floor of the building, and as Griffen reminisces on her time inside a building full of originality and innovation, she knows it’s nothing with the people.
“We all worked really well among each other, so I definitely am gonna miss that, And I hope that in the next space where I am, you know that that just continues to live through us all, where-ever we go we’ll take our little bit of sunshine to other places and juts continue paying it forward,” Griffin said.
January 15th is the final day you’ll be able to walk through Cultivate 712’s doors.
They do have plans to attend popup shops as they are on the hunt for a new location. They plan to rebrand as Cultivate Waco.
Coming up at the end of the year, Cultivate 712 is hosting a Casino Night on December 31st at 9:30pm.
