Exterior of the Union Square brick building in St. Francis, Kansas, with a Fresh Seven Coffee sign in the window, an open sign and potted plants out front, no glass in the window frames and no visible roofline behind the facade.

Start before you start: big projects need small steps

ByBecky McCray

Being Idea Friendly, Taking Small Steps means you don’t have to do big projects all at once. 

Like that falling-down building in your town. You don’t have to raise the million-plus dollars to do a full rehab. In fact, you can start before you start, with a small step that feels so small it might not feel like starting. 

Here’s what that looks like.

St. Francis, Kansas, population 1200, and a building that was falling down. No roof, and the basement had fallen in. 

Add in a couple who want to start a coffee shop. 

They didn’t start with an engineering inspection or architects’ drawings. They started with a coffee trailer that they just parked out front. They sold coffee from there while a lot of people pitched in to tackle the building problem. 

They tore down the remnants of the old roof. They brought truckloads of dirt and gravel to come up to floor level. 

They did a lot of work themselves, and people in the community helped out. 

A big milestone was moving the trailer inside the shell of the building. Still no roof, but they didn’t try to hide that. They hung coffee sacks over the old rafters for atmosphere. That’s a bit of defiance: “Look! We have no roof!”

And they turned the open space into community space. Arts exhibits, group gatherings, concerts, “meet the senator” and more. Still no roof. 

Crowd of people browsing an outdoor art exhibit inside a roofless brick building with corrugated metal walls, coffee sacks draped over exposed rafters

Eventually, they were able to afford a new roof over old rafters.

Carol Sloper from Greater Northwest Kansas Community Foundation was so excited to see I use this as an example in my Idea Friendly presentations. (Deb and I both do sessions on “Filling Empty Buildings” and it’s always a hit.) 

Carol said, “It’s just a great resource, but probably took ten years to get to that point. But they started with the building that was falling down.”

Take that giant problem from your community, the thing you’ve been wishing could happen. And don’t start with the ending. Start before you start. Start with the trailer out front, the meetup in the pizza joint, the conversations in the parking lot. Make those happen first. Find the next small step, and take that. It may take ten years to get there, but it starts with Taking Small Steps. 

Top photo: Exterior of the Union Square building with the Fresh Seven Coffee sign. Photo by Kansas Sampler Foundation, used by permission.

Bottom photo: No roof, no floor but gravel and pavers, art hanging from palettes and bare walls. Art show at the Fresh Seven Coffee space. Photo via Union Square on Facebook.