A variety of retail shops, including a vintage fashion shop and an audio store, will open later this year at the 111 West Monroe building that is currently home to Mornin’ Moonshine, on First Avenue and Monroe Street.
Bringing the tenants together at this location was intended to create the kind of space it was meant for, said Mathew Avrhami, vice president of Rialto Capital Management LLC.
The building has undergone a radical transformation of the lobby and exterior, Avrhami said.
“(It’s) somewhere that is not vanilla, something with a little more flavor,” he said.
The lobby includes features like a community worktable with laptop plugins, which Avrhami said helps create a comfortable space and flow in the building.
“You want to set the place,” Avrhami said. “You want different stations for people when they’re experiencing the building. You want a place that’s active … People want to be in a place that is active and lively today. There’s not a building downtown that’s really doing it the way we are.”
Black Cat Vintage is not a traditional retail shop where just anyone can come in and browse. It’s a different concept, said owner Claudine Villardito.
“Although I do sell the pieces I restore, they are far too rare and far too valuable to have available to the public at large,” Villardito said.
Most of the pieces are sold to collectors, museums and designer archives, she said.
The warehouse will serve as a workspace for Villardito to restore pieces and bring new life to vintage finds.
It will be filled with vintage fashion dating back to the late 1800s up to the 1990s, Villardito said.
“Black Cat has got some really unbelievable one-of-a-kind stuff, and the stories behind them are just magnificent,” Villardito said.
Villardito would be using window displays that will change regularly and will be fully lit and visible from the street, to direct people to their website if they are interested in looking in further.
The pieces that Black Cat Vintage will showcase on its site are more rare, high-designer items at higher price points. Villardito said she will be setting up a separate website for clothes that are less expensive and less rare.
“It’s not going to be tremendously expensive. It will be online only,” she said. “Again, it won’t be the kind of thing where people can come in and browse the inventory, but this will be moderately priced fashion for anybody who is interested in the genre.”
Villardito said she is passionate about what she does and has studied vintage fashion extensively.
“I feel that vintage fashion should not just be looked at, it should be worn and enjoyed,” she said.
Esoteric Audio is another one of the new tenants coming to the Monroe building.
The market for high-end audio is detracting, according to Andrew Papanikolas, owner of Esoteric Audio, but he said the company is committed to showing customers the many benefits of high-quality audio production.
“We want to invite people in and get them to understand how much more satisfying it can be to listen to music when its reproduced well,” he said.
Papanikolas said he purchased the business about 18 months ago and knew the Monroe building was the ideal place for Esoteric Audio to open in its new location, due to its aesthetically pleasing exterior and its new ownership.
“For Phoenix, it’s an architecturally interesting building and it’s one that always draws your eye as you’re passing by,” said Papanikolas.
The new ownership has been supportive of Esoteric Audio and has really focused on turning the building into a hub of activity, he said.
Whether customers are looking for headphones, wireless-speaker-type products at relatively low prices, or luxury products that are more design oriented in a physical package that’s more aesthetically pleasing, he said Esoteric Audio has it all.
“I always joke that people into high end audio are truly addicted, it’s no different than any other vice,” Papanikolas said.
Esoteric Audio is wrapping up the design phase of the store and is anticipating six to eight weeks for construction and a soft opening of the store around July 1, he said.
Contact the reporter at Contact the reporter at Madison.Rowbotham@asu.edu
