The temperature Tuesday afternoon in Downtown Pittsburgh didn’t climb much above freezing. But patrons at Kayla Branca’s new candle workshop, The Studio by PGH Candle, said they felt something warm wash over them upon entering the Wood Street store.
Branca made the shop’s opening official this week with an oversized pair of scissors and the requisite red satin ribbon.
A burning three-wick candle filled the shop with touches of vanilla and amber. To the left of a mirror-backed candlemaking bar, two olive-green pillows bookended cushions on a leather sofa.
“We really wanted to create a welcoming space where people come come and create,” Branca told TribLive as dozens of well-wishers and dignitaries packed her two-story, 2,500-square-foot storefront.
The Studio at PGH Candle, a sister business to a candle shop Branca opened in 2022 in the city’s North Side, is one of nine storefronts to open in the lead-up to the NFL Draft in late April, thanks to financial backing from Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.
“This isn’t just a store — it’s a space for experiences,” Cate Irvin, an administrator with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, said at the ribbon-cutting. “This is the kind of place you can come back to again and again.”
Popping up
All told, two dozen new businesses opened Downtown last year — some fueled by the same economic nitrous oxide that officials touted in Detroit and Green Bay, the last two cities to host the NFL Draft.
Several of those Downtown Partnership-backed efforts — from the candle shop to florist Confleurtti to the soon-to-open Silly Goose gift and novelties store — are feeding into what some call “a pop-up economy.”
“Pop-up” businesses run for short, pre-determined periods or in temporary retail space. Many are designed to build awareness of a brand, test products and, in some cases, sell seasonal goods.
“We definitely expect to see a big uptick in foot traffic at the end of April,” Irvin, the Downtown Partnership’s senior director of economic development, told TribLive earlier this month. “But they’re not just here for the draft … we’re looking for folks who want to make a long-term commitment, even if it starts in the short-term. It’s a good way to test things out.” The NFL Draft runs from April 23 to 25 and is expected to draw 500,000 to 700,000 visitors.
Branca and other business owners who spoke with TribLive don’t expect football fans to storm candlemaking businesses or load up on every type of consumer good.
But they are using investments to drum up business around the event — Downtown Partnership declined to cite specific dollar figures — as a way to lay claim to retail space in the city’s central business district.
Branca said she and the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, which is helping to subsidize her rent on Wood Street, aren’t just investing in a candle shop. They’re betting on Downtown.
The candle shop owner sees the way her store could connect with neighboring businesses. People visit to make candles, which “take an hour and a half to set,” Branca said. Those customers, “they’re going to go to dinner. They’re going to get a cocktail. They’re going to stay Downtown — and that’s good for the Downtown economy.”
Will they be permanent?
The verdict is still out on what long-term impact events like the NFL Draft have on fueling pop-up economies or small business growth.
Those things were on the minds of Detroit officials in the months leading up to their NFL Draft, which drew more than 775,000 people to the city in 2024.
The Metro Detroit Black Business Alliance helped about 40 minority-owned small businesses secure draft-related contracts. And the Downtown Detroit Partnership worked to stage pop-up businesses in vacant storefronts in advance of the event.
But officials there could not cite many examples of how the city’s economy benefited after the NFL picked up stakes and left for the next host city.
There’s similar vagueness in Green Bay, where 600,000 people — six times the city’s population — came for the NFL Draft in 2025.
Draft supporters there are quick to tout post-event financial recaps. Data, for example, shows the NFL Draft created $114 million of economic impact both locally and throughout Wisconsin.
“The NFL does a great job ensuring that the NFL Draft footprint has stuff for people to do — and the businesses in that immediate area see an impact,” Nick Meisner, vice president of marketing for tourism agency Discover Green Bay, told TribLive recently.
But even Meisner admitted the riches didn’t always extend to Downtown Green Bay, a business district miles removed from the stadium that hosted the draft.
“We didn’t see a lot of pop-up business there, per se, outside of some vendors and food trucks,” Meisner said.
Brad Toll, CEO and president of Discover Green Bay, called the week of the NFL Draft “phenomenal. … And the draft is still giving back to us in many ways.”
Green Bay invested in infrastructure as it tried to lure the NFL to Wisconsin. The city used $93 million in public tax funds and private naming-rights revenue around 2020 and 2021 to build the Resch Expo, a 125,000-square-foot exhibition center across the street from the Packers’ Lambeau Field.
The Resch Expo space was used throughout Green Bay’s NFL Draft, serving as a space for draft prospects to gather away from the hubub.
Toll called the development project a success. But he could not specifically cite how it or the NFL Draft led to additional development or business growth in Green Bay.
“I wouldn’t say those things happened because of the draft,” he said. “But it got us attention.”
‘This is the opportunity’
Shaquala Swinton-Betts is looking past the NFL Draft.
The South Side woman, who works in finance by day, is using the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s pop-up funding to open a second PAIR Charcuterie location on Smithfield Street.
Part of Swinton-Betts’ plan is practical: her charcuterie business needs more catering space. She also wants the new, 1,300-square-foot location to host workshops, offer barista classes, and give aspiring chefs and foodies a place to experiment — what she called a kind of “culinary incubator.”
“We don’t want to just do catering or just do coffee,” Swinton-Betts, 40, said earlier this month. “We want to bring people together through food.”
Ashleigh Nixon is staking her hopes on flower petals. When her pop-up Confleurtti opened on Dec. 15, it became the first florist to operate Downtown since the pandemic.
Nixon hopes spring weather increases foot traffic near her 600-square-foot shop at 208 Fifth Ave., seated both near Market Square and Vallozzi’s restaurant. Getting ready for the NFL Draft, though, is a little tougher.
“You can’t always plan for something you don’t know,” said Nixon, 39. “I’m sure it’ll be incredible. And I plan to stay ready. I plan to have extra flowers, things like that.”
She’s also planning to customize and sell flower leis, the around-the-neck floral wreaths first worn in Hawaii.
“Who knows? Maybe a player or two — or their wives — they’ll wear it,” she said with a laugh.
Like Swinton-Betts, though, Nixon has her eyes set on the months after the NFL Draft.
“Some of the other pop-ups opening, I think they’re there to stay,” she said. “This is the opportunity. This is our chance to get our foot in the door.”
