Husband-and-wife entrepreneurs David Bailey and Stephanie Harrison Bailey have big ideas for building small.
While living and working in New York City about a decade ago, they built a little house on a vacant lot they owned in Ybor City. A call-back to the shotgun shacks Ybor’s cigar workers lived in, the home has a 365 square-foot first floor and 90 square-foot loft. The couple initially used it as a vacation home when visiting Tampa, where Bailey is from. But it quickly emerged as a popular rental on Airbnb. They decided to build a second little home adjacent to it. Their “One Little House” won an Award of Excellence at the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission’s 2016 Planning & Design Awards, with the judges that year praising a design that mixed the neighborhood’s history with modern-day environmental friendliness and could meet a slew of housing market needs.
Fast forward several years and Bailey and Harrison-Bailey have again earned recognition at the Planning & Design Awards, this time for their venture in micro-retail development. Their company Nimble Retail won an Award of Excellence this year for its “Merry Little Market,” its prototype tiny retail shop that was a holiday season pop-up shop in a vacant Ybor lot last year. Hyde Park Village’s Procure, a boutique shop carrying a curated selection of gifts and items from women and minority-owned businesses, was the pop-up shop’s tenant.
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Provided by Nimble RetailStephanie Harrison-Bailey and David Bailey in front of their micro-retail holiday pop-up shop the "Merry Little Market"“The quickest way for us to describe one of our favorite reactions, kind of a layperson’s reaction to what we do, is the pop-up market,” Bailey says. “When we installed the shop, I happened to overhear someone across the street walking their dog go, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ That’s the kind of speed we’re talking about to transform a vacant or derelict corner lot into something that’s exciting and activated, almost literally overnight.”
Bailey and Harrison-Bailey were living in New York City and working in real estate when micro-retail caught their interest.
“We would see small retail spaces all over,” Harrison-Bailey says. “They would happen naturally in more urban environments in bigger cities. There were little tiny spaces that were home to barbers, jewelry stores, florists, things of that nature. We loved all of those little spaces. Having lived in Tampa before New York there wasn’t really anything like that here or in more suburban markets. While we were living in New York we were mulling this idea. We had prior experience building really small things with the two small houses in Ybor…We moved back to Tampa in the middle of 2019 to launch Nimble because we knew we wanted to launch it from Tampa. It’s our forever home one way or another. We knew how to build here; we knew the people to talk to here; we knew it would be a lot more affordable to start it here versus trying to start it in Manhattan.”
Delivering needed innovation
At first, they worked slowly and deliberately on Nimble while maintaining New York-based day jobs. Bailey started building the prototype in 2021. The couple left their day jobs to focus on Nimble in 2022. In late 2023, the prototype was complete, just in time for a holiday pop-up shop. The eight-foot by 24-foot prefabricated shop is designed for cafes, boutiques, clothing stores, salons, bookstores, bars and jewelry stores. Bailey says it’s an emerging concept in a real estate development space that sorely needs some new ideas.
“There hasn’t been a ton of innovation in the real estate market,” he says. “We seem to keep doing the same thing as a society over and over again. Our goal is to unlock a whole sector in real estate. There’s already a loose definition of micro-retail. But we really want to become the leaders for micro-retail in real estate...In that small, compact platform we see innovation. We see startups happening. We see people contributing to more of a village lifestyle where everything doesn’t have to be housed in one big box structure. Having that innovation in the real estate market unlocks value for us as developers. It also unlocks a lifestyle within existing communities that would not happen otherwise. It’s pretty exciting and the sky’s the limit. For us, it’s just a matter of raising the capital to scale this up.”
The demand from retailers is there.
“We’ve curated a good list of people who would love to be tenants in these shops,” Harrison-Bailey says. “So now, instead of one, we need hundreds.”
The little shops could be a more permanent fixture on a site for a decade or more. They could also be a more short-term way to generate revenue and interest while future development plans for a property go through approvals, permitting and construction.
“There’s plenty of vacant lots around most cities,” Harrison-Bailey says. “Our idea is that you could literally populate a lot with as many shops as you want to quickly activate a property in a way that doesn’t require waiting for construction and waiting for all the permitting and entitlements that go with a traditional development.”
While the doubters remain, they say micro-development is here to stay.
“We continue to be surprised by how many times people’s reaction is ‘You’re building too small,’” Bailey says. “Our response is, ‘Well, wait and see.’ That’s what we’ve proven over our career, there’s a reason why we’re building small.”
“If we can get over the hump with the initial pushback over the size, then people seem to be very pleasantly surprised about what something small can bring to a community,” Harrison-Bailey says. “We don’t have millions and millions of dollars to redevelop an entire block. But we can develop one parcel into something really special that people love. People still stop in front of the little houses, and stopped in front of the little shop when it was up, to take photos. People love it.”
Planning & Design Award winners
Now in their 42nd year, the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission’s Planning & Design Awards recognize innovative projects that improve the quality of life and serve as a model to follow.
This year’s winners for “Outstanding Contribution to the Community” are Hillsborough County Public Schools’s Dorothy Thomas Exceptional Center, the West Tampa Community Redevelopment Area Parking Study, the Himes Avenue Safety Mural Project, the Temple Terrace Pedestrian Master Plan, the Hillsborough County Greenways and Trails Plan and Feeding Tampa Bay’s Causeway Center.
“Awards of Excellence” winners are Nimble Retail, the Robinson High School Addition and Campus-Wide Renovation, Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Transportation: A Toolbox for Local Governments, the New Development Trip Tracker and the University of South Florida Judy Genshaft Honors College.
“Awards of Merit” go to “Infrastructure Assessment for Hillsborough County Targeted Redevelopment Areas,” “Kenneth E. Adum PK-8 Magnet School,” “Citrus Park Drive Extension,” “Preserve at Sabal Park and Sabal Place” and “Hanna Avenue City Center.”
“Special Recognition” categories include Hillsborough River Stewardship Award winner Dr. Richard Brown, Chairman’s Award winner Regional Law Enforcement K9 Memorial and Executive Director’s Award winner James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital Mental Health Clinic.
For more information, go to Nimble Retail and Planning & Design Awards