What makes Dirty Janes Orange special and why founder chose 'beautiful, artistic' city

The owner and founder of Dirty Janes already had the antique marketplace located in Canberra and her home town of Bowral, but felt a need to expand even further.

"For a small business owner to open a store in the main street, that's a hard task," she said.

"There's rent, you've got to hire staff, you've got to know employment law, be on top of GST.

"You see these creative people who get so bogged down in trying to run their business that they don't have any time to be creative."

So when the "beautiful, artistic community" of Orange became a possible location for the third Dirty Janes, she jumped at the chance.

Ms Crowley said the city ticked all the boxes she needed to make it a worthwhile venture and saw a future in the old PCYC building in Byng Street.

"It's all about finding an old building in a retail precinct that someone doesn't want to knock down and turn into apartments that we can get a good, long lease on and let the building speak to us," she added.

"I don't want to come in and turn it into a French chateau or anything."

Ms Crowley doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk.

Take a stroll through the renovated building and you'll still notice shoe marks on the floor from where the basketball court once was. Look up and you can see the scoreboard still in place.

Although the ground floor of Dirty Janes has already been booked out with dozens of stallholders locked in for the grand opening on Friday, April 26, Ms Crowley isn't done yet.

An upstairs space with room for 25 more stallholders remains empty and she's keen to hear what the public want to see fill it.

"The mindset is we all work together and help each other out," she said.

"One of the philosophies of Dirty Janes is we don't want to come to a community and just go 'here it is'. We want to be able to respond to what the community needs.

"You can have workshops up there, Saturday dance classes. Creativity comes in so many different forms."