https://dcist.com/story/23/01/13/black-owned-strip-mall-spice-suite-dc/




When Angel Gregorio opened a new location for her specialty spice shop called the Spice Suite, she invited several other Black women business owners to join her. She thought big.

Instead of just opening her own brick-and-mortar, she transformed a 7,500 square foot lot in D.C.’s Langdon neighborhood into a retail community for local Black-owned businesses. She dubbed the space, which is located at 2201 Channing Street Northeast and had its soft launch on Friday, Black And Forth.

“It was just this catchy, cool name that I created for how I describe my process of going back-and-forth with Black business owners,” Gregorio tells DCist/WAMU. “And now it is the name of a shopping center — a strip mall — that I own in D.C. So I feel good about that and I’m grateful to be in the space.”

Gregorio felt ready and was excited to deliver on her novel concept. Her own spice shop opened in the lot on Friday and will be joined by four other salon businesses in the next three to four weeks. The hair, nail, waxing, and braid salons will lease commercial space from Gregorio and are going to set up shop inside renovated shipping containers. The owner of the nail salon business, Nail’d it, had been operating inside her apartment in Southeast for the last six years, according to NBC4.

“We have a lot of conversation about affordable housing, but we don’t talk enough about making commercial space affordable for Black women. And so since no one is talking about it, I’m just going to do it and let people talk about it,” says Gregorio.