Located in the heart of Downey is a strip of pop up shops and public collectives that capture the taste of the city’s culture; among these, however, the most renowned in enamoring this culture is Stay Gallery. Found at 11140 Downey Ave., the gallery, ran by Gabriel Enamorado and Valentin Flores, is attempting to accommodate to the youth of the city by bringing two teen ambassadors – Carlos Agredano, a junior at Downey High School, and Emely Lopez, a senior at Warren High School – into their community renovations.

As Agredano and Lopez frequented the gallery, they began to develop a close relationship with Enamorado and Flores, the gallery’s directors. The directors figured the community needed a bit more appeal to the younger side of Downey, so they turned to “the two ASB kids from each high school,” as Agredano put it, and invited them to take on a new project.

“We saw them around here a lot,” Enamorado said, “so we thought, ‘why not?’”

This “project” consists of the two students meeting once a week to discuss how they could add a bit more appeal to Downey’s culture in the eyes of their peers. They then consult the directors for consent to their plans, in accordance to procedure.

“The purpose of this project is to create a multipurpose space for the youth in our community,” Lopez said, “since the majority of our Downtown Downey attracts adults.”

Plans thus far are still very free-formed in terms of what the pair is planning to do to boost Downtown Downey in terms of being youth-friendly, but they are already recruiting others who they see beneficial in improving the city’s culture.

“We have already started to form a dynamic team of people,” Agredano said, “and we hope to make that team official by late December to begin creating this space.”

Stay Gallery may already attract the “young and hip,” but the pair is in the early stages of crafting a specifically youth-oriented space within Downey’s community.