Shining A Different Kind of Light

A quaint Black-owned tea shop anchors the up-and-coming Southside neighborhood

By: BRIANA BARNER

“Excuse me a second,” says Kimberly Bailey, the owner of KimBee’s, a gourmet tea shop located in Greensboro’s Southside neighborhood, “I have to blow up balloons.” The balloons, a bouquet of brown, yellow and clear ones, are for a client.

KimBee’s is one of many pieces of this puzzle that makes up the Southside neighborhood, located west of South Elm Street and east of Lee Street. It is a small shop, decorated with a yellow and red color scheme, with walls lined with tea.  The  furniture that seems made of wrought iron.

The neighborhood is one of the reasons why the A&T grad chose to return to Greensboro from California to begin her business, then Basketdoodles, in 2005. She remembers a time when the Southside didn’t feel too much like a neighborhood. “It definitely wasn’t a place where you walked down the street,” she laughs. “There would be prostitutes walking down the street. I didn’t come down here when I went to A&T.”

It’s hard to picture that dismal description of the community. But as late as the early 1990s, the neighborhood, which was once one of Greensboro’s affluent areas, suffered from blight. The revitalization project has brought it back to life. Now shops and historic houses line the streets of this neighborhood. The lights shine differently over here. No really—they do. Just check out the lampposts. Bailey says that the historic lampposts that decorate the streets are indicators of the revitalization that the neighborhood has or will receive.

“Southside brings together a diverse group of people, the majority of whom are not from here. It offers affordable home ownership. It makes you an entrepreneur in your own right,” Bailey says.

She says that she prayed for a live/work space and saw the potential in the neighborhood when the revitalization project first begun. Now she rents out an apartment above her garage and enjoys living above her business. “I love the commute,” she says with a smile. “The only downfall is that you’re always here.”

“KimBee’s [offers] what this neighborhood stands for—togetherness, fellowship. You can relax; get on the Internet, read a book. It’s elegant. It’s like bringing Madison Avenue to Greensboro,” Bailey states. “A customer came in and said, ‘I don’t know whether to sit down or bow.”