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New Bedford's young dreamers
By Lauren Daley
Standard-Times staff writer
 Elissa
Paquette was arranging a display of hand-printed shoes
and listening to Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" play
from her laptop when the doors of her boutique burst
open.
"Yay!" exclaimed customer Genevive Hunt, raising her
arms above her head.
"I'm so glad you're finally open! The perfect stuff in
the perfect spot."
The perfect stuff: the hand-made and vintage clothing,
jewelry, belts and shoes in Ms. Paquette's shop, Calico.
The perfect spot: near the corner of Union and Purchase
streets in downtown New Bedford.
"You know, there is such a great community of artists
right here in New Bedford," Ms. Hunt said, browsing the
racks. "Boosting the cultural economy. Keeping the money
in the zip code."
Ms. Paquette, 27, is part of a growing community of Gen
Yers who up and started their own businesses in downtown
New Bedford.
They're the 30-and-under crowd. The MySpace generation.
They advertise largely on the Web and they all list each
other's businesses as their MySpace "friends."
In fact, Ms. Paquette created a MySpace page for
"Downtown NB" itself (www.myspace.com/downtownnewbedford.)
Under "About Me:"
"An up-and-coming downtown community ... Independently
owned restaurants and unique shops, located within a few
quaint cobblestone blocks. Fabulous galleries and
museums! Cheap rent for artists and young entrepreneurs.
Good seafood."
Status: "Swinger."
Zodiac sign: "Capricorn."
We Love: "Cobblestones, over-use of the whale image as
logo, saving mills from home depots, refurbishing
buildings ..."
So, welcome to Downtown NB, dude.
Where the rent is cheap, the dreams are big and the
streets are made of cobblestone.
"I think this city is almost there," Ms. Paquette said,
on a recent day at Calico's newly opened location.
"We're almost at the point where, just like Providence,
people will come to New Bedford to spend the day and
shop around. And it's because of all these amazing young
people around me.
"I'm surrounded by people my age who have started their
own businesses. That's my favorite part of downtown —
the community of creative young people."
On the Downtown NB MySpace she created, there are a
dozen shops, galleries and restaurants listed, all with
Gen X or Y owners.
We may be in a, oh, let's call it recession-ish economy
right now, but the young have always dared to dream.
"It's a struggle at times to be in business for
yourself" in a shaky economy, Ms. Paquette said, "but
New Bedford is a really supportive and inspiring place
to do it."
The Fall River native moved to the Whaling City in 2002
while on break from the Massachusetts College of Art in
Boston. She started subletting a downtown studio with
friends and "fell in love with the city."
In October 2004 at age 23, Ms. Paquette opened Calico at
its first location, on the second floor of a building up
the street.
"I started Calico with basically a couple of credit
cards," she said.
"The great thing about New Bedford is that the rents are
still pretty low. My entire original investment in the
store was probably less than $3,000."
One day in 2005, Sasha Putney walked into Calico and
decided she had to open a salon downtown.
"I told Elissa from Calico, 'Youre store is awesome;
your location is awesome — this is where I want to be,'
" said Ms. Putney, 27.
"She encouraged me; she said this city has a community
of young people all starting out, they all know and
support each other."
So Ms. Putney, her boyfriend, Dave Benway, and his mom,
bought the building at 165 Union St. and Ms. Putney
opened Salon Lola, an upscale hair and nail salon, in
September 2006.
"New Bedford has this young art scene going on. The vibe
is really, really cool and it feels like it's
up-and-coming," said the Carver native.
"(In the salon) where I worked on the South Shore, it
was all suburban housewives. In New Bedford, it's all
creative people — art students, local musicians — that
come in here.
"I have clients that drive here from Boston and the
Cape. I'm like, 'Wow, it's working.' "
"Just being in the heart of downtown, everything fell to
place," Ms. Putney said.
"My dream came true. Sometimes I feel like I should
pinch myself."
Of the Gen Y entrepreneurs downtown, she said:
"As a whole, we're trying to take New Bedford up a
level.
"We're taking the risk because we have to. A lot of
young business owners around here, we're like, 'We're
gonna do it, and that's it. Do or die.' "
New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang has noticed the burst of
young energy downtown.
"I think it's fantastic — a whole new generation values
New Bedford and wants to make it great," the mayor told
The Standard-Times.
He said the Gen Y businesses "are invigorating the city
with new energy and new blood and I think that's
fantastic.
"It has a high energy to it, but it's not contrived in
any way. It's still based on the historic nature of New
Bedford," he said.
"Moving creative, imaginative businesses into New
Bedford highlights what we've always been about —
artists, musicians, inventive people.
"What we have right now is this tremendous energy, this
creative, imaginative, young community; it adds to the
quality of life."
At the ripe age of 30, Jeff Goggin is a grizzled
downtown vet.
He opened The Green Bean, a hip coffee/sandwich joint,
with his sister Andrea, 28, on Dec. 31, 2003.
"Opening on New Year's Eve was the worst idea," he
chuckled. "I was up to my eyeballs in coffee grinds.
"But I was confident and naive, which is good, because
people who are scared don't try stuff ... After a
certain age, people get scared to try stuff."
In his early 20s, Mr. Goggin had worked at three
different restaurants washing dishes, cooking and
emptying buckets of fat.
"We called them the pig buckets," he said. "Ew."
Then when he was 27, he realized: "I don't want to work
for anyone else anymore."
So he and kid sis Andrea pooled their life savings,
found a small spot downtown with relatively low rent and
started The Green Bean with little more than java beans
and a dream.
Four years later, they've hired nine employees,
including their 23-year-old brother Eric as a cook.
Their menu has vastly expanded from a simple cup of Joe:
Latte flavors include mint chocolate and Milky Way;
their specialty sandwich is pesto grilled chicken and
mozzarella on toasted garlic bread; then there's the
smoothies, milk shakes, bagels, cookies, scones and a
juice bar.
On a typical day, they serve 300 people, many of them
UMass Dartmouth and Bristol Community College students
from the Star Store on Purchase Street.
Not long ago, the Green Bean moved to a bigger spot,
closer to campus, on Union Street — hardwood floors,
celery green walls, beige couches and WiFi Internet
connection.
Even now, Mr. Goggin has a humble,
when-I-grow-up-I'll-be-a-real-coffee-shop mentality:
"I still look around and think, 'We're almost there.
Someday we'll be a real place.' "
Still, it was the success of The Green Bean and Calico
that inspired Ms. Putney to open Salon Lola.
And Ms. Paquette and Mr. Goggin said they were inspired
by the slightly older businesses downtown: No Problemo,
a Mexican restaurant, and Solstice skate shop.
Now that Mr. Goggin has been around four years, what's
the senior's advice to incoming frosh?
Just do it.
"I wish more young people opened their own places ...
You can totally do it," he said.
"One of my employees is always talking about opening up
a cupcake place. I tell him, 'Even in a bad economy,
cupcakes are good. People will say, I'm depressed. I
can't pay my bills! I need a cupcake!' "
Contact Lauren Daley at ldaley@s-t.com.
April 13, 2008
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