Artists, musicians, dancers and theater groups are being priced out of Denver as buildings suitable for studio and performance space are transformed into residential lofts.
In an effort to reverse that trend, the city of Denver has created a revolving loan fund designed to kick-start creative endeavors. It also is urging business leaders, civic groups and artists to work together to develop affordable and sustainable space.
Mayor John Hickenlooper announced the effort Monday night at the historic Oriental Theater, 4335 W. 44th Avenue, while unveiling the results of his Task Force on Creative Spaces.
“Hopefully this will be an avenue for people to create their dreams,” Hickenlooper said. “Small injections in neighborhoods are every bit as important as the grand civic gestures.”
The loan program will start with $100,000 in federal funding and could grow from there, said Ginger White, a Denver economic development specialist who has been working on the project.
“We want to create an environment that’s a little more friendly to preservation of creative space in the city,” White said. “We’re looking at regulations that would allow for new space and financing new space.”
Among the task force’s recommendations:
Find places within community and recreation centers that would work as studio and rehearsal spaces.
Activate vacant commercial storefronts in the central business district.
Turn the McNichols Building on the north edge of Civic Center into a cultural center that would include a tourist center, locals-only exhibits and performance space.
Develop a multi-tenant arts and culture facility and/or a public artist center to house local artists and arts organizations.
Create a Creative Spaces Land Trust.
That sounds like good news to Michael Stricker, executive director of the Paragon Theatre, a nonprofit group.
The theater can’t afford to buy its own space, so it rents from the Phoenix Theatre, 1124 Santa Fe Drive.
“When you’re a small nonprofit theater, 25 to 45 percent of your budget goes into rent, and it’s not your own space,” Stricker said. “There are a lot of competing nonprofits out there.”
The mayor’s task force identified 800 working artists in Denver, and only 50 to 60 properties that would be suitable for creative enterprises. Most were zoned industrial or business and lease for between $7.50 and $18 a square foot. Purchase prices ranged from $350,000 to almost $2 million.
Because Denver came of age in the post-industrial era, the task force found, it doesn’t have as vast an inventory of old warehouses, vacant historical buildings and factories that can be converted to creative incubators.
Many of the city’s existing industrial buildings – in Lower Downtown, along the South Platte River and in Globeville – have been discovered by real estate developers eager to make the most of their artistic cachet.
Jim Basey, co-chair of the Downtown Denver Area Plan steering committee, said his group has focused on the possibility of an artists’ incubator in an area it calls “Arapahoe Park,” which is northeast of LoDo.
“This area popped out as an underutilized area that might be home to incubators and entrepreneurial business,” Basey said.
“We’d need some help from the city,” he added. “If you could create a zone that had some financial incentives, that would work.”
Creativity is its own economic engine, according to Richard Floria, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class.” Cities with high concentrations of creative enterprises boast flourishing economies.
“The creative community tends to locate in disenfranchised or emerging neighborhoods where space is less expensive,” the task force reports. “They often invest money and ‘sweat equity’ to restore the built environment and improve the landscape and streetscape.”
Minneapolis-based Artspace develops affordable artists’ live/work projects throughout the country and has documented an ironic phenomenon: Other neighborhood development typically follows those projects within three years, generating cultural activity and an increase in visitors to the area.
That kind of revitalization eventually makes it so expensive that the artists who spurred the revitalization are forced to move.
Visual artist Chandler Romeo and her husband, Reed Weimer, have spent more than 20 years buying properties in marginal neighborhoods and filling them with artists. In the Highland neighborhood, two have become well-known art institutions – Pirate Gallery and the Bug Theatre.
The couple’s most recent project is Blue Silo Studios, a renovated creamery near the National Western Stock Show complex at Interstate 70 and Brighton Boulevard.
They use one studio and rent 11 to other artists. Rent is intentionally kept below market, from $375 per month for 900 square feet to $1,000 per month for 2,000 square feet, Romeo said.
“We’re artists ourselves, and that’s kind of where our ideas came from,” Romeo said. “Just to maneuver through developing and owning buildings and developing them for the arts, it’s not something we learned in art school.”
Blue Silo offers the kinds of amenities the mayor’s task force recommends for similar projects: proximity to the urban core, historic buildings, rapid transit service and other artists.
When Ivar Zeile opened + gallery five years ago, he found the same elements in a building just five blocks from downtown Denver.
Rather than paying the $20-per-square-foot commercial rents charged by downtown and Cherry Creek landowners, he found a building owned by the Denver Firefighters Protective Association and pays a little more than $8 per square foot.
At the time, it was risky to open a business near the Denver Rescue Mission and Samaritan House homeless shelters at Lawrence Street and Broadway. Now Zeile says it was worth the gamble.
“I said, ‘This neighborhood is going to get better.’ I looked everywhere throughout Denver, and nowhere else could I make this operation work.”
Assistant business editor Linda Castrone can be reached at lcastrone@denverpost.com or at 303-954-1452.
Cultural initiatives from coast to coast
Other cities with business initiatives promoting culture and the arts:
Boulder: The former Watts-Hardy dairy processing facility at 2590 Walnut St. has housed the Dairy Center for the Arts since 1991. It rents affordable space in the historic, 40,000-square-foot structure to 16 local arts organizations at below-market value. It also houses performance space, two theaters, three galleries and classrooms. The center claims more than 150,000 annual visitors.
San Antonio: The Cultural Collaborative was begun as an arts plan charged with making policy, staffing and funding recommendations to the City Council, which it did in 2005. The plan, a marriage of economic development and cultural affairs, took nearly two years to develop. It lays out 38 strategies and a 10-year plan to achieve a goal of supporting the growth and contribution of San Antonio’s creative economy.
Boston: Artists will have a chance to purchase their workspaces at Midway Studios, a $23 million renovation of three former warehouses in the Fort Point Channel neighborhood. Since last year, 89 loft spaces have been given to painters, sculptors, writers, musicians and dancers. Most tenants pay rent for their spaces, but low-income artists are subsidized.
Cleveland: The collaboration known as ARTcade had a four-year run downtown before closing in 2006. A successful art gallery, tired of the empty spaces surrounding it, asked a local realty company to offer incentives to artists looking for space. Subsidized rent brought in a variety of artists until the lease ran out and building management decided to entice sports- focused businesses.
San Diego: Last year, 18 dance, music, visual arts and arts advocacy groups lined up to sign leases at the NTC Promenade, a 28-acre former naval training center site turned into a cultural hub. Run by the NTC Foundation, a nonprofit entity established five years ago to create a “collaborative, creative community,” the site comprises 26 buildings that will house arts, culture, science and technology units.
The city of San Diego provided $5.8 million in redevelopment funds toward restoration. Private sector funding has added $1.6 million and the NTC Foundation board and staff have given $525,000.
VICKIE MAKINGS AND BARB HUDSON, DENVER POST RESEARCH LIBRARY
