In Seattle’s Hardest‑Hit Corridor, an “Inconvenience Store” Opens

Seattle’s downtown has become an unexpected testing ground for a new kind of storefront — one that doesn’t bother selling anything criminals typically target. Instead, it sells art.

The “Inconvenience Store,” created by curators Lilia Deering and Mary Anne Carter, is housed in a former 7‑Eleven along Third Avenue, a corridor nationally known for severe post‑pandemic declines in foot traffic, persistent street‑level drug activity, and repeated retail closures. In many parts of the country, stores stock what customers want. In this part of Seattle, stores increasingly stock what thieves don’t want.

The logic is blunt: If a business sells items that can be easily stolen and resold for quick cash, it won’t last long here. So this storefront sells art — unique, handmade, and essentially worthless on the resale market to anyone seeking fast money.

A Store Designed to Be “Unstealable”

The shop is arranged like a convenience store, but every item is an artist‑made object: beeswax egg candles, oversized bobby pins, keychains shaped like snacks, lighter cases encrusted with shells and beads, even a walk‑in refrigerator gallery. There’s a hot bar, but instead of food, it serves sculptural imitations of hot dogs and pizza.

None of it is practical. None of it is mass‑produced. None of it can be flipped for cash. That’s the point.

Carter told reporters that handmade art is inherently inefficient and expensive to produce — which also makes it useless to anyone looking to grab merchandise and immediately resell it. In a corridor where traditional retail has been repeatedly gutted by theft, that inefficiency becomes a survival strategy.

Why This Corridor Needed Something Different

The building sits along Third Avenue, a stretch of downtown Seattle that became a national symbol of urban struggle after 2020. Longtime retailers left, foot traffic collapsed, and open‑air drug activity became common enough that city leaders openly acknowledged the area’s instability.

Seattle’s Downtown Activation Plan, launched in 2023, pushed cultural pop‑ups into empty storefronts as a way to bring people back and stabilize the street. The Inconvenience Store is one of the most visible examples of that strategy: a business that can operate in a high‑crime environment because it doesn’t sell anything thieves typically target.

Part of a Larger Trend

Base Camp Studios, the nonprofit behind the project, has been buying and converting older buildings along Third Avenue into artist housing and cultural spaces. They’re not alone. The city’s Seattle Restored program has filled more than 50 vacant storefronts with art installations and small business pop‑ups. Cannonball Arts converted a massive former Bed Bath & Beyond into a contemporary arts center.

Across downtown, the pattern is clear: Where traditional retail can’t survive, arts organizations are stepping in.

Will It Work Long-Term?

Whether these art‑based activations can stabilize the corridor once city subsidies fade is still unknown. But organizers say the immediate goal is simple: make a street known for shuttered shops and public‑safety concerns feel like a place people actually want to walk through.

For now, the Inconvenience Store is doing exactly that — offering a storefront that can exist in a high‑theft environment because it sells the one thing criminals can’t easily use, flip, or fence: art.