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Photo by Abigail Grey Johnston

The Bellevue Theater opened nearly 90 years ago to give North Side residents a small, local movie house with a neighborhood feel. After decades of films and concerts and, more recently, a transition into a meeting hall for a Masonic lodge, the theater’s marquee beckons again — this time, with local makers drawing the crowds.

Two Richmond-based retailers — menswear sellers Homme Essentials and collaborative boutique Maven Theory — set up shop in the renovated theater’s first-floor retail area after construction wrapped up in late 2024. A third business, Kickshaws Gluten-free Bakery, is the final tenant and is expected to move in this summer. The remainder of the building was converted to apartments.

“It was the only [location] that seemed right for our business, attractive to us, [had] a community we wanted to be around and we felt like there was a space for retail,” says Christina Campitell, co-owner of Homme Essentials. “I felt like it chose us, in a way.”

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Homme Essentials’ new space in the Bellevue Theater (Photo by Christina Campitell courtesy Homme Essentials)

Homme Essentials’ current storefront opened in early May, five years after its founding. Campitell and Alan Long, both veterans of the Richmond fashion and retail worlds, launched the brand on Lafayette Street in the West End selling clothes, home goods and more items sourced from small brands. An unexpected move in late 2024 limited its retail offerings to a temporary space within the Grace Street record store Vinyl Conflict until Campitell and Long found the building on MacArthur Avenue.

As the first retail tenants, the duo were able to mold the design of the new space, which was an unexpected, but positive, element of the move for Homme Essentials. “I taught myself how to use SketchUp to do the layout for the dressing room [and] stock room,” Long says. This allowed the team to put shoppers first with every design decision. “We try to have elevated product and nice things, but presented in a way that is not intimidating, that encourages you to touch it, feel it and try it on,” Long says.

Maven Theory, open in the theater space since October 2024, enjoyed the same benefits in the blank canvas storefront it acquired. “To have new fixtures, but also kind of be in an older building that was historic, that was very attractive to us,” says co-founder Meg Althoff.

The brand, founded by Althoff and Bethany Frazier, brought together Sun Theory and Maven Made, their respective candle and skin care and fragrance businesses, under one label. “In 2022, we started sharing a production space, and that’s where we started talking about the concept of Maven Theory, before we even knew what it would be,” Althoff says. Frazier and Althoff first collaborated on a series of perfumes and candles sharing a line of scents, then they launched the brand shortly after.

Maven Theory’s Bellevue shop is now both a showroom and a workshop where new products are invented and sold in one setting; it also carries products from small businesses in Richmond and nationwide.

Both tenants see the potential of the new location to support and uplift other small crafters in Richmond — through seasonal markets, pop-ups and other events on the theater’s front patio — in the same way others have helped them on their journeys to their current spaces. “I feel very lucky that we have a very supportive base, and [in Bellevue] especially, we tapped into a whole new one,” Althoff says. “It’s cool to see how many people here want you to do well.”

“What really makes us are the customers that keep coming back,” Campitell says, “and most of them are local. Without our in-store customers in Richmond supporting us, we would be nothing.”