The Empty Storefronts Conference is a day-long conference that focuses on holistic solutions, national trends, best practices, and success stories that lead to action plans and spark ideas to fill empty storefronts.

The Empty Storefronts Conference features national and local speakers that have implemented practices and tactics in their own communities and across the country to address vacant storefronts and is hosted in storefronts and neighborhoods across Milwaukee.

In 2019, Willow Goldstein (The Bakery’s Founder) and I were invited to Milwaukee to speak at this conference. We hoped to inspire real estate and development professionals to offer subsidized space to artists in what would otherwise be an empty storefront. Our presentation was called “Culture, Community, and Commodification: How to Leverage DIY without Selling Out.”