Creating an “intentional community” for artists and creative businesses has long been a dream for Cynthia Madden Leit ner, executive director of the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood.
Now, she has a potential partner to help her make it reality.
PLACE (Projects Linking Art, Community & Environment) is a national nonprofit based in Minneapolis. The organization works with communities to create sustainable mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods for artists and arts-friendly small businesses, including coffeehouses, galleries, cafes, wine bars and jazz clubs.
The Museum of Outdoor Arts integrates art, architecture and landscape into public spaces to make art a part of everyday life.
“Both of our missions really coincide,” said Leitner, who likens intentional communities to the communes of the 1960s hippie era.
Members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious or spiritual vision. They usually also share responsibilities and resources.
It’s a concept that’s worked in Ventura, Calif., where PLACE worked with the city to develop Working Artists Ventura, a $57 million community designed for artists and creative businesses.
Located in Ventura’s cultural district, WAV offers affordable living and working space for more than 100 artists, who each had to be interviewed to be accepted.
“Ventura was losing its artists, so it contacted us,” said Chris Velasco, president and executive director of PLACE. “We work by invitation, and we were invited by city officials who wanted to provide affordable studios for artists.”
Before it’s determined whether such a project is possible in metro Denver, PLACE representatives will visit the area to tour potential sites and conduct a series of workshops and a June 29 public forum.
Leadership, rather than funding, is the key to making a PLACE project work, Velasco said. But PLACE is adept at uncovering funding sources that others might not know are available.
“We look under every rock,” Velasco said. “We are experts at finding appropriate funding mechanisms for our projects.”
In Ventura, PLACE was able to leverage $1.5 million in financing from the city into $65 million in funding for the project.
The housing authority of the city gave the project 15 years’ worth of project-based Section 8 vouchers, valued at $3 million, for the 15 units that are available to the homeless, said Ed Moses, chief executive of the agency.
Velasco also was able to use tax credits and sell naming rights to theaters and other venues in the project, Moses said.
“PLACE helped us build one of the most magnificent tributes to the arts in the city of Ventura,” Moses said. “It is gorgeous.”
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
Forum
Date: June 29, 7-9 p.m.
Site: Englewood Civic Center, 1000 Englewood Parkway
Agenda: Input on a community for artists
