De-Livery and Re-Cultivate

The Livery development has been shelved, but this holiday season, one of its buildings will host an old favorite: Cultivate

Thrive Construction’s COO Becca Lipski, CEO Gregory Beale, and Vineyard Table owner Kathy Anderson. (Photo by Laura Hagar Russh)

In 2019, builder Greg Beale announced an ambitious new plan for the buildings at the corner of Main and Burnett streets. It was called The Livery, and it was supposed to be an artisan food marketplace — like a groovy food court.

Then COVID hit. Interest rates went up, and financing was hard to find.

Some pieces of this vision came together: Beale opened the stylish Livery Co-Work, and a sleek new restaurant, Goldfinch, opened by Nick Izzarelli and his team, replaced longtime favorite K&L Bistro, when its owners retired. But the small former UPS store and that big corner building—which once housed Round Table Pizza, a lawyer’s office, a mini-gym and the old Sonoma West Times & News office—sat empty for years.

In an interview at their office on South Main Street yesterday, Thrive Construction’s Beale and Becca Lipski conceded that they were shelving The Livery project.

“I feel like we held on to a lot of hope for a long time about the food hall project,”
said Lipski, Thrive Construction’s chief operating officer. “Just recently, we had to acknowledge that it just wasn’t in the cards. And we have to focus on [financially] stabilizing the building.”

The building at the corner of South Main and Burnett streets. The little building on the left will be transformed into a holiday pop-up. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

“We don’t want the building to stay empty any longer,” Beale said. “With the political and economic climate the way it is, and the uncertainty around that, to do the big project, which would probably take 18 months to two years, it just doesn’t feel like the right time to take that significant level of risk financially, especially when there is something we can move forward with pretty much immediately. So it’s like, ‘No, we’re done waiting. Let’s do this.’”

What is “this”?

Longtime residents of Sebastopol will be thrilled to learn that Thrive has invited local businessperson Kathy Anderson to re-open Cultivate, a much-loved homewares store, as a holiday pop-up on November 15. The pop-up, which they’re calling “Re-Cultivate,” will be located in what used to be the small UPS building, right next to Goldfinch.

Anderson managed the original Cultivate Home, which was owned by Kathie and Frank Mayhew and housed in the building that now holds Soft Medicine. When the Mayhews closed the store, Councilmember Neysa Hinton and her friend Sundee Minton bought the business, intending to re-open it. Then COVID hit, and they moved everything from the store into a 40-ft. shipping container. The store never reopened.

For the new pop-up, Beale and Anderson purchased the store’s remaining stock and fixtures from Hinton. To this, Anderson will add some linens and other things from her own business, Vineyard Table, which she ran at Pacific Market and venues in Graton and Glen Ellen. The pop-up will also feature custom-made knives and cutting boards from Kai and Parker Litwin, chocolates from Rainy Day Chocolates, and locally made CBD body care products.

Though they’re calling it a pop-up, they’re also testing the waters to see if there’s enough support for a new homewares store in Sebastopol.

I asked if they’d be competing with Gather, just down the street. Anderson said they won’t be selling the same things, and Beale agreed, “So it’s super important that this is complementing, not competing,” he said. “That is non-negotiable.”

What’s going to happen with the big building on the corner?

Beale said the main building that was going to be The Livery will instead be spruced up and rented out, as it was in the past.

“We have permits submitted for some repairs and cleanup of the exterior, so the exterior shell is going to get freshened up starting in the next couple months,” he said. “Tenant improvements will start likely a little bit before the end of the year but really be full steam starting in January through March. The goal is to have at least part of the building open in April or May of next year.”

If the pop-up does well, maybe Cultivate will re-open there.

“Or maybe a spice shop,” Anderson suggested.

“Or a tasting bar,” Beale said, “something interactive.”

“There are a lot of good plans for the big spot,” Anderson said, “but it was too big for the pop-up and for now, we’re going to test that out.”

In order to pay for the renovation of the big building, Thrive will be selling the Livery Co-Work spot.

“We are putting the co-work building on the market in the coming days, the hope being that we sell it to an investor who wants to keep the co-work running,” Lipski said. “In order to get the main Livery building occupied, we need to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into it, so we made the difficult decision to sell the co-work to help cover the costs.”

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