Boxville Community Market Wants to Expand its Footprint

Last summer Boxville, a neighborhood market located at 51st Street and Calumet Avenue, set up several shipping containers on the land just outside of the 51st Street green line stop to house emerging local businesses and provide the Bronzeville community with their spin on a community market. This year Boxville is back from round two with the hope of expanding. Photo: Boxville
Last summer Boxville, a neighborhood market located at 51st Street and Calumet Avenue, set up several shipping containers on the land just outside of the 51st Street green line stop to house emerging local businesses and provide the Bronzeville community with their spin on a community market. This year Boxville is back from round two with the hope of expanding. Photo: Boxville

Boxville Community Market Wants to Expand its Footprint

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

Last summer Boxville, a neighborhood market located at 51st Street and Calumet Avenue, set up several shipping containers on the land just outside of the 51st Street green line stop to house emerging local businesses and provide the Bronzeville community with their spin on a community market. This year, Boxville is back from round two with the hope of expanding.

“Last season was our first season and we started the market in June of last year and the season ran through September. Patrons were able to shop with us to purchase fresh fruit and produce, street food, t-shirts, jewelry, accessories, home decor, and bath and body products. Our two main objectives are providing the space and platform for local entrepreneurs to be able to sell their products in the community and then to help build [the] community along the 51st Street corridor,” said Michelle E. Lanaux-Merritt, Boxville Market manager.

Boxville is an initiative of the Urban Junction Foundation (UJF) and its founder, Bernard Lloyd. After hosting and participating in the Bronzeville Bike Tour, Lloyd realized that there was a need for the bikers to have a space to socialize and spend some time tuning up their bikes after the ride. From this realization came the Bike Box which was the first shipping container located on the Boxville Site.

Lloyd spent somewhere between $5,000 and $7,000 to get the Bike Box up and running and from there decided to expand on the idea to provide entrepreneurs a more affordable platform to get their businesses in the community, said Lanaux-Merrit.

The 2018 Boxville season will kick off on June 13th and run through September. In the meantime, Boxville staff and organizers are hard at work trying to further expand Boxville to be able to accommodate even more vendors.

The first ever Boxville fundraiser, Help Build Boxville, will take place on May 31st and all of the proceeds will go towards completing existing containers, establishing additional boxes, extending market hours, and creating an adjacent neighborhood square to house community building activities, according to a press release about the fundraiser.

“There is an opportunity to add additional shipping containers to the site which means that we would be able to expand the offering at Boxville and as part of that expansion we want to add a neighborhood square that would be a community space where people could come to access the market, but also arts and crafts, live music, and we want to add a game box to the site so that people could come to play table tennis, chess, and checkers as well as a greenhouse box so that we can start growing on the site itself and then additional boxes where we are able to expand the number of entrepreneurs that are joining us at the market on a regular basis,” said Lanaux-Merrit.

For more information about Boxville and to purchase tickets for the Help Build Boxville fundraiser, visit boxville.org.

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