Downtown gallery to open
Frank, a new nonprofit arts collective on Franklin Street, opens this weekend with help from a town of Chapel Hill small business loan.
Art pieces range in price from $30 to $12,000, and represent more than 70 artists, said Barbara Rich, gallery manager.
“It’s all about creating a flow and telling a story as you move throughout the gallery,” Rich said.
The art has been arriving the past two weeks, Rich said. “It was like watching a garden bloom.”
Member artists, who pay Frank a 25 percent commission, pay starting fees and dues, get to vote and must work one day a week in the gallery.
Rich is the only employee, with everyone else either being an artist or a volunteer, she said.
Most costs and needs were covered by donors, including $6,000 in lighting for the space.
“This whole end of Franklin Street is so much more than pizza and T-shirts,” Rich said.
Sutton’s adds DVD rental
Sutton’s Drug Store added a DVDNow rental kiosk to its Franklin Street store about a month ago.
In the first two weeks, 60 items were rented from the kiosk, manager Don Pinney said. Rentals went up in the third week, when movies were offered for free.
The kiosk was difficult to get installed, as the store doesn’t quite meet most DVD rental kiosk companies’ criteria.
Sutton’s closes at 6 p.m., after which the majority of movie rentals take place, Pinney said. “We are in a trial period to see if we can get enough movement.”
It didn’t cost the store anything to have the kiosk installed, he said. “All we had to do was provide an Internet connection and electrical connection.”
All profits from the rentals go back to DVDNow, with the potential for a share going to Sutton’s in the future.
Uniquities opens fourth store
A fourth Uniquities store opened March 17 in downtown Durham.
Since opening, business has been better than expected, buyer Lynda Lewis said.
The owner, Julie Jennings, had always wanted to open a store in Durham, and with the city’s revitalization, it was the ideal time.
“Durham doesn’t have that many retail space opportunities. Something opened up and it was perfect timing,” Lewis said.
The Chapel Hill-based store’s selection of designer apparel is well suited to the mix of people living in Durham, particularly students from large cities attending school at Duke University, she said.
“There’s an urban customer here, a city-slicker type,” Lewis said. “It affords them another option to buy local and stay local.”
Recent renovations to the space at 1000 W. Main Street went smoothly. The building was recently restored.
