An Unexpected Photography Studio Turned Event Space
Stanton, Iowa (pop. 678) is our featured rural community this week! We'll be sharing success stories throughout the week from local leaders and business owners who are making an impact here.
Today's guest blog post is from Morgan Lewellen of The Studio, an event rental space serving Southwest Iowa.
* * *
In August of 2016, my husband and I walked into what used to be my husband’s family’s meat processing business, Model Meat Market. The building sits in the middle of the block on Stanton's main street. I had never seen the building when it was operational but when we had stopped by that day it was very much run down and had sustained a lot of water damage and just issues from it being vacant.
During that time period I was heavy into trying to grow my photography business. I shot everything you could at that point, trying to gain as much experience as I could. At the time I was big into shooting weddings, families, and senior pictures. I was trying to break into the newborn photography scene because there didn't seem to be a lot of newborn photographers in our area at the time.
Since I was wanting to do more with newborns, I knew I needed studio space and was currently renting space for that, but I knew I wanted bigger and something that people would be comfortable walking to. When we walked into that run down building that day I had joked about cleaning up the building and making it a space for a studio. Boy, did that joke grow into ideas! I sat down and started hand drawing some sketches of how I would want my dream studio to look. We both were excited about the idea and slowly over the next three years we worked on demoing the stuff from the old meat locker in our free time.
We took out the built in fridge and freezer that took up half the building, in between the walls and fridge and freezer was about three feet of very old insulation to keep them cold. This wasn't your normal insulation but it looked like very fine wood chips and was very heavy from having the roof leak and water get in to it. We pulled up the old sub floor that had several layers stuck to it and took down the drop ceiling. It was a huge undertaking to do by ourselves. We are lucky to have friends who would chip in on their free time if we asked. We would have a lot of people stop in occasionally and make comments about how big of an undertaking this was. I had a vision and every time we worked in the building it got that much closer to it, when people would make comments we would simply just tell them, "just wait.... you'll see."
When we got to a point where the demoing was almost done, we were lucky enough to have a local contractor come in and take a look at the building. I showed him my hand drawn sketches and he was excited to get started rebuilding! From there the studio was put back together just like my hand drawn sketch. The doors to the studio opened August of 2019; we held an open house and invited the town. We had such a great turn out and business seemed to be taking off just like we had planned. I was booking more shoots and was able to get more creative with my photography.
We had several people ask us if we had thought about renting out the space for small parties. We had put in a full kitchen just for our own use but had never thought about renting it out. We decided, why not. We would use the extra income to help pay off the renovations. We went out and purchased some tables for people to use them for their events.
As time went by and few people started using it as an event rental, we started getting more inquires, then more, until I was having trouble booking my photoshoots around them. It had appeared that we had created a second business in our little town!
Today the building has grown to just an event venue, as I have given up photography to spend more time with my family. We are so fortunate that our small town supported us with building our business into becoming the well known small event venue for Southwest Iowa that it has become!!
Some photos of the renovation process... what an amazing transformation!
Find out more about the rural revival happening in Stanton, Iowa here:
EPISODE 147 // JENNA RAMSEY OF STANTON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND KEVIN CABBAGE OF FMTC
SUPPLYING YOUR SMALL TOWN FIREARM, FISHING, AND GROCERY NEEDS
GROWING A SMALL TOWN AG REAL ESTATE COMPANY
Several times throughout the year, we’ll bring in experts to interview on a particular topics that are relevant to small town business and leadership.
You’ll hear first-hand knowledge and info from people who are experiencing success as entrepreneurs and leaders in small towns across rural America.