“Everything happens for a reason”
“You have to stay positive”
“When one door closes, a better one opens!”
These are the silly, cliche statements I heard from my momma the past month while I frustratingly cried to her over the phone. My responses were usually something witty, like “well if a better door opens then how come everyone doesn’t walk around slamming doors shut?!”
She didn’t get where I was coming from…
The past month has been one of the scariest of my life. It was confirmed that our landlord would be leasing our space to another business, we had 30 days to find another home.
This wasn’t a huge surprise to me. I figured this was very probable and I had been seriously searching for a new space for the past 6 months with a wonderful, fantastic commercial realtor (who also happens to be an AerialCLT student.) You rule, Patty!!!
This month, I faced the very real possibility of having to close AerialCLT. I was working on coming to terms that I might have to tell my 3 best friends that they would be losing their jobs, that my love and passion would no longer have an outlet, that we would no longer have a haven for our community, that my biggest achievement would be gone, while at the same time trying to stay hopeful and optimistic that something would work out. It had to, right? When one door closes…
Doors kept closing. A LOT of doors were closing all around me. As if our requirements for a space weren’t specific and difficult enough to find, drop that right in the middle of the currently insane real estate market in Charlotte and I just could not see how we were going to make it out of this.
AerialCLT needs:
16+ foot tall ceilings
5,000 sqft minimum
20+ parking spaces
Bathrooms (heaven's sake, more than 1 please...)
Affordable rent (What’s that?)
Located somewhere other than an industrial park or (God forbid) the airport
A landlord who saw the amazing-ness of AerialCLT as a Charlotte staple, a sound business, and something worth being proud to host on their property.
What we got:
14-20 foot ceilings
10,000 sqft
30 parking spaces
2 Bathrooms
Affordable rent (!)
Located uptown Charlotte, inside the 277 beltway
A landlord who is the coolest ol' southern guy who thinks we are super rad. (He’s been known to wear bellbottomed leotards with massive platforms. His excuse was “it was the 70’s.” All I want for Christmas this year is a framed portrait of this guy in this exact outfit to hang in the studio so I can salute to him every day I come to work.)
I absolutely can not wait to show you our new home. When I say home, I mean HOME. We will not be moving again for a very, very long time. We will finally have a permanent place to make our mark, to grow, to evolve, to expand, to flourish, to create, to be everything we have always known we could be but couldn’t be in our past locations. Exciting stuff, right? Our target move date will be August 1st-15th. I will be sure to update you as we make progress and we will send out invitations for our House Warming party soon. In the meantime, scoop the pics below for a sneak peak!
P.S. When I called my mom to tell her the good news she quickly interrupted me as I was excitingly telling her about the space and said “but wait! I thought the sky was falling!”
At least she didn’t say I told you so….
801 N. Tryon
