Co-owners Carlos and Katy Peña cut a ribbon to officially open Paper City Clothing Company at its new location.
Reminder Publishing photo by Tyler Garnet
HOLYOKE — Paper City Clothing Company invited the community to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony on May 30 to showcase their new business at 144 High St.
The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was previously abandoned and slated for demolition, but now it is fully restored and is the new location for the business as well as a new community art gallery and event space.
Co-owners Carlos and Katy Peña said three years of work has gone into restoring and opening their new location at 144 High St.
Paper City Clothing Company has been based in downtown Holyoke since 2016 and the Peñas said they were looking for a new location to expand their business as their current rent began to rise.
Paper City Clothing Company is a mission-driven business that seeks to expand opportunities for youth through offering the service of custom printing as well as creative retail and an art gallery and event space. They produce shirts and offer entrepreneurship programs.
The building restoration represents a $700,000 investment by the business who raised the funds from a mix of public and private sources.
“We are a small business, not developers, but jumped at this opportunity” Carlos Peña stated, “There are still many vacant and abandoned properties that take away from how special this city is. With the right partnerships in place like we were fortunate enough to find, what we’ve done could be a replicable model for other small business ready to own instead of rent their space.”
Paper City Clothing company offers custom printing, a creative retail space and an art gallery space to allow the owners to host events.
For more information, readers can visit papercityclothingcompany.com.
Katy Peña said she and her husband were able to purchase the property through the Surplus Properties Program and were excited to stay in Holyoke.
“It just represents a new everything and I think we never could have done it without people who believed in us. [The building] was abandoned for many years, slated for demolition, it was in very rough shape but it’s a really special building historically, really beautiful as you can see. I feel like we can do anything now” Katy Peña said.
After being abandoned for a decade, the roof was caving in and there were no working utilities.
The building now features three residential units on the second floor and two 1,000-square-foot commercial storefronts on the ground floor, as well as a 3,000 square foot multi-level event and gallery space.
Holyoke Planning and Economic Development Director Aaron Vega discussed how this project can help revitalize and restore other abandoned buildings in the city.
He said, “This building was about to be torn down by the city. It was going to cost over $100,000 to take this building down and have another empty property here in the city of Holyoke. They were diligent, they continued, they have a vision and we helped them achieve that vision. That’s the story we want to tell is that people who want to open up their small businesses and get these properties back online, work with our chamber, work with our office, work with the administration, we can get this stuff done.”
Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia, state Rep. Patricia Duffy (D-Holyoke) and City Council President Tessa Murphy-Romboletti delivered brief remarks as well as leaders from MassDevelopment, the chief funding partner for the building restoration.
Guests were then invited to tour the newly renovated and revitalized space.
