A natural pair of projects

The Shoe Center 164 West Broadway
A non-profit school, showcase, and incubator for independent custom shoemakers to work together, study together, share business contacts, share work, share equipment, share customers, and generally demonstrate the art and science of fine shoemaking.

The Tango Center 194 West Broadway
A non-profit school, gathering place, and incubator, for Tango musicians, dancers and instructors to work together, learn together, share business contacts, share work, share customers, reinforce local community, and generally propagate the gentle art of Tango.

Assumptions

• It's good to bring activity to downtown Eugene
• It's good to provide custom shoes and shoe services
• It's good to provide them adjacent to the largest dance center downtown
• It's good to allow people to see shoemakers at work, both for educational purposes, and to attract customers
• It's good to provide a decent living to as many talented craftspeople as possible
• It's good to maintain the highest possible quality, while keeping services & products affordable
• It's good to provide workshops on shoemaking, in order to find talented, hard-working, community-minded people with high shoemaking potential
• It's good to spread appreciation for custom-made shoes, and skilled handcraft generally, to counteract the modern problem of poor-fitting, anonymous & low-quality mass production.
• It's good to hold conferences and seminars to make Eugene one of the custom shoe capitals of the world.
• It's good that the shoe center be a non-profit project, however, like the Tango Center, people working there are not necessarily working for the non-profit. They may be independent shoemakers, teachers, businesses, etc.

A downtown Shoe Center will have

• classes & educational activities (conferences, workshops, seminars, visiting experts etc.)
• business incubator and networking activity
• a gallery/showroom
• publicly visible workshops
• shoe services
• shoe museum (in cases lining walls)
• library/last library/etc.

Proposed relationship

• The Eugene Community Trust (umbrella of the Tango Center) is proposing to launch The Shoe Center as a non-profit project under its umbrella, with an independent budget center. The Shoe Center would be adjacent to the Tango Center, and a sister project of it, seeking to find as many avenues of cooperation as possible.