Since 2012, 1144 Chorro Street in Downtown San Luis Obispo has been vacant.
It’s a space with a long history that is finally being used again thanks to Cal Poly, which is combining its Mustang Store and Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) locations into one.
“As a good community partner, we are excited to bring some vitality back to the space,” said Karen Tillman, who serves as the economic development advisor to Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong and interim executive director of the Cal Poly Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Diana Koralski is a recent graduate and current participant of the school’s CIE program where she’s working on a business with her co-founder that would help fight gambling addiction. For her, the new space will offer more visibility to the community and connections to be made with other local entrepreneurs.
“It's all going to benefit the community and allow for more opportunities for both the students to grow in their endeavors as well as the community to benefit from the new ideas that pop up there,” she said.
The shop will provide an extra way to bring customers in and engage them in a different way.
“If we can pull them in there and then show them what we actually do from an innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development perspective, we see that is creating some really cool crossover that doesn't really exist today,” Tillman explained.
1144 Chorro Street has an interesting history. What was once a large retail shop in the 1950s, then Copelands and eventually a Sports Authority, the space has been vacant since 2012.
In 2018, plans to convert it into a restaurant, bar and bowling alley fell through leaving the door now open for Cal Poly to utilize it.
