FJ Cava, one of Bayview's newest and most innovative business owners.
Eight new businesses opened up on Third Street in 2008, according to a collaboration of business support organizations helping businesses in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood. That's more than good news in this economy...and in this neighborhood.
Many of Bayview's retail and service businesses are clustered along this main drag through town, and most all of them face a daily struggle to succeed.
One reason for the ebb and flow of business may be that the connections between them, their customers, and the world they operate within can be as strong (or weak) as that of residential neighbors. In Bayview, there is an emphasis on working together, and ensuring that community cornerstones, like business, coincide with grassroots work to build community strength.
One example of how symbiotic the arenas of commerce and community-building are is a collaboration between a local business leader and a leader in the faith-based jobs development arena.
FJ Cava is pictured in a rare moment of relaxation in the entryway of his unique business, Webspot, a retail space that is part cafe, part recording studio, and part technology classroom. Enter, Traci Peace who offers to give creative attention to FJ's retail space, so that she could have a teaching opportunity with her students
Traci (pictured below) is the visionary behind Visions of LaModa, an organization that works with young women in the desgn field. She holds classes at Faith Temple Church on Oakdale. Last summer, she took a group of youth to New York City for a backstage experience of fashion week.
The collaboration between Webspot and Visions is, at first glance, a remarkable example of socially-responsible businesses working with the community for the benefit of all. It also illustrates the emerging recognition that social cohesion and commerce, not usually found in the same sentence, are intertwined and critical to one another. The pattern seems to be that overall community health emerges from strong and highly-localized social and built systems.
Leave it to Bayview, and people like FJ and Traci to blace the trail!
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