SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Tourist towns often look for ways to keep local economies bustling year-round, not just during tourist season. In Colorado, one place is trying something different. It's investing in a new makerspace that includes affordable storefront housing for craft entrepreneurs. KUNC's Rachel Cohen has this story.
RACHEL COHEN, BYLINE: On a bright, early summer day in Grand Lake, Colorado, visitors explore nearby Rocky Mountain National Park, or the state's largest natural lake. Some build sandcastles on the beach or fish off the boardwalk. Up on Main Street, they pop into shops and dine on roadside patios. Most people vacation here in the summer. Town manager Steve Kudron says in the winter, things wind down, and some stores and restaurants close for the season.
STEVE KUDRON: We want to keep the restaurants open, and the town is a beautiful, most amazing place to come visit in the wintertime.
COHEN: Grand Lake just opened a new downtown makerspace, with shared equipment for designing and crafting. It's focused on traditional crafts, a nod to the rural culture. Tourists can take classes in silversmithing, leather working and boatbuilding.
KUDRON: They want to spend time here because we give them that opportunity to have fun, and that's the economic drive.
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COHEN: Inside the 3,000-square foot Grand Spirit Makerspace, Marcie Shearon and Matt Paisley are reconstructing an old pair of cowboy boots.
MATT PAISLEY: You can see that's a little uneven.
MARCIE SHEARON: OK.
COHEN: Thanks in part to a $4 million state grant, the town also built nine apartments next door to the makerspace. They're for creatives. Most include their own storefronts. They'll go for roughly a thousand to $2,000 a month. Kudron says that's a deal here, where just a bed, not a bedroom, can go for $800.
KUDRON: Allows these creative people who also have to have a job to pay the rent, but start something that's theirs, whether it be a recording studio, giving music lessons, painting or selling photography. And as a town, we're trying to find those corridors to opportunity.
COHEN: Cobbler Matt Paisley, also a high school woodshop teacher, is showing Marcie Shearon how to trim a boot sole's edges.
PAISLEY: Just fix the general shape and then get the rand ground down a little bit more, so it's...
SHEARON: OK.
PAISLEY: ...A little more tapered.
SHEARON: Yes, sir.
PAISLEY: Think you're comfortable doing that?
SHEARON: I am.
COHEN: Shearon is a seamstress in the county, runs her own shop out of a garage.
SHEARON: Wedding dresses, to boat seats, to upholstery jobs.
COHEN: People bring her their old shoes, but she hasn't known what to do with them. Paisley says this makerspace is unique. Cobbling is sort of a dying craft. There's virtually nowhere for people like Shearon to learn.
PAISLEY: All this equipment is very difficult to use, very heavy, very expensive. People can't dabble in this, normally, right?
COHEN: In addition to classes, the makerspace plans to soon offer memberships, so locals can use the equipment kind of like a gym and eventually earn certifications in trades like cobbling.
SHEARON: I've been off the sole a few times.
PAISLEY: I got to say, Marcie, that is really pretty good.
COHEN: Shearon's first pair of cowboy boots, almost done. She plans to use the makerspace to expand her business, like an upcoming job helping repair gear for the fire department.
SHEARON: It's very, very helpful to have the tools that you need to do a job.
COHEN: And she signed on as a teacher at the space next fall, helping pass on the craft of cobbling and making Grand Lake a more vibrant place to visit and live.
For NPR News, I'm Rachel Cohen.
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