City Flea co-founders Nick and Lindsay Dewald are poised to make cool-shopping history again this year, with a new schedule and more venues, including stops in the reopened Washington Park in OTR.
“We loved how the flea was jammed into an underutilized lot last year, but feel that being integrated into the park will prove to be a great move for us, the vendors and the shoppers,” the Walnut Hills’ couple writes in an email. “We will be sharing the park with a dog run, a state of the art playground, brand new restroom facilities, a parking garage, fountains, a grassy lawn, shady benches and so on.”
Four of the couple’s seven June through December monthly events will be held at the OTR park, with Music Hall as a beautifully historic backdrop. Additional stops are slatted for the original 12th and Vine Street lot and at the American Can Lofts in Northside. They will also be a part of the
OTR Summer Celebration, and have a mystery, yet-to-be-announced location for the November Flea.
With the
application process for vendors open now through May 12, the Dewalds are looking forward to creating even better experiences for vendors and shoppers alike. For now, that means keeping the Fleas monthly instead of making them more often. “We feel like keeping them once a month is a nice frequency and forces people to make sure they definitely go instead of just saying they'll make it next week,” they write. “Lots of the vendors are very small operations and we think that a month in between each event allows them to restock their shelves.”
In the future, though, those monthly shopping sprees may not be enough. “We would love to get to a point where The City Flea could be a weekly event that is sustained by a steady combination of tourists and a critical mass of urban residents,” they write.
And the entrepreneurial-nurturing entrepreneurs are trailblazers, too. “We have heard of at least four or five other urban flea markets that are about to pop up in other cities, several of which have contacted us for info,” they write. “Hopefully the city will continue to embrace our events and we will be thought of as being a bit ahead of the curve. We would love for The City Flea to gain a reputation that extends outside of Cincinnati and contribute to bringing visitors and import residents.”
By Elissa Yancey
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