Five food trucks lined up on Main Campus Drive at The Corner at Centennial Campus, and racks with second-hand clothing and sustainability pop-ups were scattered throughout the space for the recurring Food Truck Rodeo.
The Corner is a space dedicated to fostering socialization, community, sustainability and creativity among the visitors. It’s a place for people to cross paths and bring people together, which is a necessity to give Centennial Campus a personality of its own beyond one’s preconceptions. It’s new, full of buildings with no names and separate from Main Campus, so creating personal connections through “third spaces” is vital to its advancement.
That’s where Centennial Campus Placemaking comes in. Their small but mighty team is dedicated to creating and improving these third spaces to incorporate “play time” into students’ largely work-oriented lives.
Katie Butler, the marketing and communications coordinator for Centennial Campus Placemaking, was one of the organizers of the event, along with Jude DesNoyer, the director of Placemaking.
“We’re trying to make a place worth visiting, place worth hanging out, working, making it better for people that are here,” Butler said. “We want to attract people to make them become active participants, not just somebody who comes to work and then checks out, but somebody who enjoys being here and wants to participate in things.”
The Food Truck Rodeo had Doo Wop Desserts, Boss Burger, Hollywood Taco Shop, Sister Liu’s Kitchen and Santopietro Sandos to provide something for everyone. From dumplings to burgers to iced lattes, they had it all.
Not only did the event have food trucks, but the Campus Thrift Store was part of the event and had a pop-up, along with Amelia Boys of Boys Studio, a shop with hand-screen printed clothing.
Jaxon Davis started Campus Thrift Store three years ago. He found it overwhelming to be in school and feel the pressure of having a good outfit a lot of days but also didn’t want to compromise with the ethics of fast fashion.
“I essentially just started collecting a bunch of my friends’ clothes, and figured if I could sell them for a dollar then I could make an impact — not only on campus but off of campus — by being able to donate that money after the fact and give it to charities that could make use of it,” Davis said.
Thrift stores around Raleigh can get pricey. Although there are a lot of great finds, it can be difficult for students to find something affordable. A point of thrifting for many students is to keep great clothes in circulation for the sake of sustainability. Campus Thrift Store aims to do just that but at a much lower price.
Sustainability is one side of the coin, but the organizers feel that it is imperative to make on-campus events accessible to students.
“I think the purpose of the story is that Placemaking is more than just us,” DesNoyer said. “Part of our efforts is to collaborate with others and help them make sure they’re successful. And so this is a good example of us working with a student group who’s doing hands-on learning with placemaking, but also recreation.”
Both DesNoyer and Butler felt that the mission of Centennial Campus could be to break down barriers between students and bring different demographics together.
“I think a lot of times Centennial gets left out of the picture,” Davis said. “I think unless you have classes over here, you’re not really coming over here much. I think there should just be a bigger focus on having events geared towards students on Centennial to highlight engineering and textiles and whatever it might be, just to bring people over here and make them feel engaged.”
Centennial Campus Placemaking also has a concert series, pickleball, yoga classes and other community and sustainability-based events coming up, so keep a lookout on the Events Calendar. Follow Campus Thrift Store on Instagram to keep tabs on their upcoming pop-ups, and for more related events, visit NC State Sustainability.
