About a year ago, Joe Spencer, St. Paul’s Director of Arts and Culture (would that every city were lucky enough to have one of those), approached Jeff Johnson of Spunk Design, Jon and Jarrett Oulman (the owners of Northeast Minneapolis’ popular venue, the 331 Club), and Joe Furth, proprietor of the beloved but, for years, beleaguered vinyl shop, Eclipse Records. He came to them with big idea for sparking a rejuvenated music scene in downtown St. Paul.

During former Mayor Norm Coleman’s tenure, in the early 2000s, the city built a large building, Lawson Commons, in the heart of downtown. Since then, officials have wooed some ballyhooed restaurants into the space (notably Fhima’s, then Pop!), but none have been able to make much of a go of it.

Spencer’s pitch involved creating a hub of several complementary storefronts there, each of which could support the others and together create an attractive downtown St. Paul destination for legions of  young art-loving, live-music-going Twin Citians.

After months of negotiations, the City’s efforts paid off and a deal was struck to rent adjacent spaces in the Lawson building to three new, loosely connected ventures: a large, new venue for music and food (Amsterdam Bar & Hall, owned by the Oulmans), a record store (Eclipse, managed by local indie-rock favorite Martin Devaney, who’ll also be booking shows for Amsterdam) and a neighboring poster design shop and gallery (Big Table Studio).

After a summer of renovations and planning, all three opened their doors this fall, and, so far, business seems to be booming. This weekend, I visited Peet Fetsch, the owner of the new poster shop, Big Table Studio, now in its fourth month of operation. It’s a large, open space: at the center are broad, ink-spattered tables; behind them is a long desk with a few computer desktops, flanked by bookshelves and file cabinets and small office appliances.

And everywhere you look, there are posters: gig posters and hip bicycling motifs, clever city-boosting designs. I notice some Best Made Co. axes and ephemera on one wall; there’s some leftover “Merry F-ing Christmas” wrapping paper on a roll near a work table. Printed pieces are hanging, like banners, from a wire stretched across the ceiling; they serve as the line of demarcation separating the retail portion, at the front of the shop, from the work studio and office space at the rear.

Fetsch has a long history in the design community around here, most recently working closely with Johnson at Spunk Design and as a curator/organizer of the politically inspired poster exhibition series “Poster Offensive.” In Big Table Studio, Fetsch created a multiuse print shop: there is space for eight primary “seats at the table” as he calls them: artists were invited to join up, paying $150 monthly rent in exchange for use of the printmaking equipment (including letterpresses, screenprinting and the like), exhibition and retail opportunities, office space and wi-fi, and 24-hour access to the shop.

It’s a good deal, and all the available, vested “seats” were soon taken by friends and colleagues in the industry, each of whom is well-established in the field: Fetsch and Johnson, of course, and also Zara Gonzales Hoang, Bill Moran (Blinc Publishing), Nick Zdon, Bill Ferrenc, Craig Johnson and Andy Powell.

In addition to the shop-based artists, Big Table Studio shows and sells posters by scads of other well-regarded Twin Cities artists and design teams, among them Adam Turman, Tooth, Aesthetic Apparatus, Best Made Co., Landland and others.

Fetsch says, beyond the working studio and retail spheres of the shop, he’s also got plans for monthly poster exhibitions of work by area designers and community education classes to encourage people to “get their hands dirty.” He says, “We want Big Table Studio to be a poster community center, spreading the word about the hands-on, do-it-yourself elements of design.”

Among his inspirations for the new studio, Fetsch counts printmaking hotspots, like Highpoint Center for Printmaking and Minnesota Center for Book Arts, but also spunky, entrepreneurial ventures, like Who Made Who or Lunalux, both based out of Minneapolis.

“I love the weird science of design,” he says, “its combination of education, experience and just doing things, trying things out. Here at the studio, what we want is pretty simple: we just want to make beautiful work and have fun doing it.”

Big Table Studio’s next big poster exhibition, inspired by the country’s economic meltdown, “Insolvent,” will open in early March. Keep track of sales, shows and other events on its website: http://bigtablestudio.com/.