Oklahoma Merchants Join Retail World at Red Dirt Marketplace

By Stan Miller, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- There's something new in Bricktown and it's not a restaurant or bar. It's called the Red Dirt Marketplace, and Thursday it will open its doors on the waterfront in Bricktown.

The Red Dirt Marketplace is 6,000 square feet of local merchants selling everything from homemade jam to fine art.

Retail business in the Bricktown area is headed for the basement, literally. The 6,000 square foot former basement of the Miller-Jackson Building now houses The Red Dirt Marketplace.

The marketplace will house at least 22 small retailers like Suan Grant who is busy putting the final touches on her area. Grant makes homemade jelly called Suan's Scotch Bonnet Pepper Jelly, and her daughter is a talented pottery artist so the two are starting from scratch hoping for success.

"Oh, yes, that's how I got started," said Suan Grant. "My family and friends said, 'this is so good, you should sell it.'"

So she took a seminar on retailing, and now she's hoping the Red Dirt Marketplace is just the recipe for her recipe.

"Oh, I just think that Bricktown is the place to be," said Grant. "This is so exciting down here, and foot traffic you're going to have everything that's happening in Oklahoma City is downtown."

Bricktown booming is something co-owner Chad Huntington has known for years. He and partner Bob Bekoff started the Red Dirt Emporium three years ago, and introduced the downtown water taxis in 1999. He has high hopes this is just the beginning of a retail boom in Bricktown.

"We've tried to keep a lot of diversity in our product selection," said Chad Huntington. "We have upscale gifts, we have art, we actually have oil paintings and sculpture, high-end antiques, but we also have affordable options; $10 sunglasses."

Critics say that without some big name national retailers in Bricktown this retail concept most likely won't float. Huntington says they were saying the same thing about 10 years ago about a downtown canal and water taxis. He says that was about one million paying customers ago.

"The national are going to be more respondent to Bricktown, or more open to coming to Bricktown after there's a more vibrant, local independent retail market," Huntington said.

Huntington calls this a retail incubator, and hope it will hatch major profits for tenants like Becky Killman.

"We've had our business for nine years and we're in several different marketplaces and we were offered Bricktown and we knew it was going to be great for our store, for advertisement," Becky Killman said.

"We'd like to see more of this down here, whether it's us or somebody else," said Huntington. "I think the more the merrier for retail in Bricktown."

Anyone interested might want to get to the marketplace early Thursday; many of the items are one-of-a-kind. There is still booth space available. If you're interested call 415-6779.