I walked down the main drag of my neighbourhood today, peeking into empty storefronts and squealing with delight.

I live on the run-down end of the Danforth, where the Greek restaurants have petered into thrift shops, jumbled convenience stores and vacant shells. On some blocks, there are more empty or covered-up stores than open ones.

Normally, I peek through the windows in despair. It’s depressing living in a ghost town.

This time, I found life inside: People hanging clothes on racks, stringing up lights, greeting customers.

I felt like a kid running into a cupcake store, or a woman stepping into a dress shop. In fact, I did both.

Oh the beauty, the joy, the sugar, the gratification! Together with dozens of my neighbours, I brought these shops to the Danforth.

They are pop-up shops — temporary stores that, in this case, will open for six months at bargain basement rent.

We hope they are so successful they sign permanent full-rate leases. We also hope they draw enough traffic to bait other permanent businesses into the area.

We are sick of waiting for a Starbucks or government project to rejuvenate our shopping strip. We’ve decided to do it ourselves.

We stole the idea from Newcastle, Australia. There, a brilliant pop-up program transformed the barren downtown mall into a thriving main street in three years. Like any good idea, the concept spread around the world, to England, California, New York, Alliston (yes, Ontario) and Danforth East.

My neighbours and I have been working on this for 1.5 years now.

We started tentatively , with two weekend pop-ups in one single store last October. By December, we had converted six previously empty storefronts into shops for the month.

This weekend marks our fourth round. Let’s call it Danforth East Pop-Up 4.0.

Five stores are hosting their grand openings. The big difference: four of them will stay open for six months.

Pop-Up 4.0 stems from hours of work and workshops and meetings and painting sessions. We’ve rock-climbed the learning curve.

It’s one thing fill one store on two weekends, and quite another to manage six for a month.

We’ve had to become headhunters, lawyers, graphic designers, general contractors, website managers, publicists, conflict mediators, researchers, project managers, grant writers … or find them in our neighbourhood. In the first two months alone, more than 70 people worked on this project, some for more than ten hours a week. None of them, until now, were paid.

Thankfully, we got a generous grant from the Metcalf Foundation. Last week, we hired two of our most committed volunteers to run the project together. Still, they won’t be able to do it alone, nor would we want them to.

One of the joys of this project has been all the new friendships it has inspired. As I walked down the street today, I bumped into three fellow volunteers, people I have met working on this project. There is nothing like a challenge to build a community. They were squealing with delight too.

Our biggest lessons, like most, relate to money and time.

You can’t figure out a new business, let alone change a neighbourhood, in one month. The pop-ups needed more time.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But even the lovely landlords who’d agreed to be part of our program were loath to loan us their spaces for more than a month. It would cost them too much.

Unlike Australia, the Ontario government offers commercial landlords a generous tax break for empty properties. The rebate was created as a recession cushion. It’s become a blight creator. In our neighbourhood, it translates to around $200 a month.

Understandably, the landlords don’t want to lose money on this urban experiment.

So, while our first pop-up tenants got the spaces for free, Pop-Up 4.0 tenants are paying enough to cover the rebate and utilities. It works out to $750 a month, still a huge bargain.

But here’s the surprise.

Paying something, we’ve learned, is better for the tenant too. As a rule, we humans don’t value free stuff. Given just four weeks rent-free, one tenant opened a week late and another packed up a week early!

Even bargain rent requires a business plan, which we now demand at the outset. We are keen to incubate fledgling businesses, but only the serious ones.

Lessons usually stem from mistakes. But we’re doing something right. Two of our pop-ups are fixtures now on the strip, paying full rent, and one of our volunteers opened her own stunning store where you can buy original art and jewelry.

There’s something else to squeal in delight over, and more importantly shop in. Of the five pop-ups, three are women’s boutiques. The owner of one, Colleen McDonald, tells me she’s had 50 requests to buy the dress in her window already. Clearly the neighbourhood is ready for this.

Come see the pop-ups for yourself this weekend. They are located on Danforth Ave., between Monarch Park and Woodbine Aves. For a list, go to http://danfortheastcommunityassociation.com/summer-pop-up-shops/

Let me know what you think!