July 6th, 2021 | Story by Gordon Dritschilo | Originally Posted in the Rutland Herald
A variety of house plants soon to be available at GreenSpell Plant Shop.
Center Street’s newest addition is looking to green up the city.
Calista Budrow and her husband have bought the former Christian Science Reading Room building and are renovating it ahead of opening a plant shop there. The store, to be called GreenSpell Plant Shop will be aimed at indoor horticulture.
“It’ll almost be like a boutique plant shop and gift shop, exclusively houseplants,” Budrow said. “Think cacti, succulents, tropical plants — the types of things I haven’t been able to find much of in Rutland County. The big box stores or grocery stores might carry them sometimes, but not in the greatest condition.”
Budrow said houseplants are a growing market.
“It’s definitely popular among millennial women, according to my research,” she said. “You have to go on Instagram. ... The whole plant-parent movement — it’s ages 25-40 and women. It got even more popular with COVID.”
Nikki Hindman, executive director of the Downtown Rutland Partnership, said she’ll be a customer and she expects to be far from alone.
“The indoor houseplant scene has absolutely exploded,” she said. “I believe it’s both an interest in adding green to one’s living area and improving the quality of one’s air. I have quite the houseplant collection myself, and I look forward to adding to it. Plants and pets — that’s the new thing.”
Hindman said despite it having seemed empty for years, the Christian Science Reading Room had not been vacant prior to the purchase.
“Technically, I believe they were open on Tuesdays for two hours,” she said.
The building did, however, need a lot of work, according to Budrow.
“We completely gutted it,” she said. “We uncovered some of the really cool old ceiling.”
The upper floor needs even more work.
“It’s a mess up there,” she said. “There was a fire in the building, maybe 30 years ago that was never dealt with.”
Budrow said their plan for the upper floor is a short-term rental, which they will operate in an “Airbnb-type situation.”
“When we moved here, we came through the Stay to Stay program,” she said. “We wanted to stay downtown, be right where everything is, for our visit. There was nothing. ... We ended up staying at a hotel outside of town.”
Hindman said she hopes that will spur more residential development on upper floors.
“I get a lot of requests from people moving to the area who would like to live downtown, and we’re completely saturated at the moment,” she said.
Budrow said she does not expect the rental to be ready until next year, but that they plan to open the store in the fall.
“It all depends on renovations,” she said. “I would love to be open just before all the events in October.”