Sat, Jul 04, 2009
 This is the back of the Steinfeld warehouse, which has been vacant since the eviction of its previous tenants, in Downtown's warehouse district. kelly presnell / arizona daily star
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A1 Communications Cable Techs Health Care Sierra Tucson Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Trades/Construction RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Tucson RegionArts groups: City should redevelop warehouses, report saysarizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.02.2007
The city of Tucson should preserve and redevelop the dilapidated buildings in its Downtown warehouse arts district, a new report says — even though it might take millions of dollars to bring some of them up to city code.
The suggestions, part of a 58-page draft report assessing Pima County's cultural viability, will be presented to city officials and local arts organizations in November.
The report is part of a joint study by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC); the Nature, Arts, Culture and Heritage Organizations, an alliance of local arts, culture, nature, and heritage nonprofit organizations; and private consultants. Funding came from a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a combined matching amount from the city and the county.
Tucson's warehouse district has long been home to artists who have worked — and in some cases, lived — in buildings inspectors have said have unsound roofs and/or floors, crumbling walls and unsafe wiring.
The Arizona Department of Transportation owns the buildings and originally planned to tear them down to make room for a new road, but now plans to sell them. The city wants to buy the buildings and eventually sell them to the artists, but so far has plans to buy only two warehouses.
Whatever it does, the city says it must follow the Tucson Historic Warehouse Arts District Master Plan, which the City Council adopted in 2004. The plan's goals include affordability for artists living and working in the district, mixed art uses, diversity, economic sustainability and improving the buildings in poor condition.
The city's intention to follow the master plan is evident in two examples: Zee's Warehouse and the Museum of Contemporary Art, said Jim Glock, city transportation director.
In the case of the building commonly known as Zee's Warehouse, 1 E. Toole Ave., the city plans to buy the building from the Arizona Department of Transportation, and then sell it at the same price to former tenant Zee Haag, who was recently evicted for safety reasons.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, or MOCA, at 174 E. Toole Ave., is in a state building over which the city has an easement agreement allowing it to lease out the building, Glock said. Eventually, the city would also like to buy the building to sell to MOCA, he said.
City Councilman Steve Leal said he wants the city to buy more warehouses used by artists, fix them up and lease them to artists.
Leal said that doing so would be better than subsidizing rents on privately owned warehouses or lowering taxes for artists who buy their buildings, both of which other cities have done. If the city buys the warehouses there would be no tax liability for the artists, he said, keeping tenant costs lower than if they were sold to private developers.
"To me the bottom line in all this stuff is reducing (the artists') overhead so that they can navigate financially in the Downtown," Leal said. "We need to deliberately write them into the script. We can't just leave them up to the winds of fate."
What's next for the warehouses is up to the Arizona Department of Transportation, said Councilwoman Nina Trasoff. Until the state decides when to sell other warehouses, the city can only do so much, she said.
Still, she wants artists to remain the center of the district, she said. Ideally, nonprofits or other funding would help the artists stay in the warehouses, if not own them, she said. She favors deed restrictions that would require the buildings to be used for arts-related purposes.
"The goal is to have artists there and to help them find a way to make it theirs," she said.
"Cultural uses" stressed
When deciding the fate of Tucson's warehouse district, creators of the report due out in November hope city officials will look to their recommendations, which incorporate elements of the Historic Warehouse Arts District Master Plan.
The report suggests "the properties be the focus of redevelopment efforts for cultural uses" and that the city buy them, eventually "transferring them at 'favorable valuations' to nonprofit and for-profit developers who are prepared to adhere to the guiding principles" of the 2004 master plan.
In order to make redevelopment possible and costs affordable to tenants, the report says, the project would need to tap funding and support from "historic and low-income tax credits, low-interest financing, Regional Transportation Authority funding for reinforcement of foundations under the Downtown Links project" and money intended for Downtown development.
"I think the strong sentiment here at TPAC and in the community is that we don't want to lose this," said Roberto Bedoya, the arts council's executive director. "If we were to lose a cluster of artists or studio spaces, we would lose a component of a dynamic that animates Downtown and brings character to Tucson."
Historically, cities that have worked with artists and invested in their arts districts have benefited from their actions, said Randy Cohen, vice president of Policy and Research at Americans for the Arts, a national nonprofit arts-advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.
"Cultural districts make Downtown a great place to be," Cohen said. "It brings in jobs and generates government revenue that help pay for critical services that the city needs."
The action plan points to eight cities as models for Tucson: Kansas City, Mo.; Memphis, Tenn.; Minneapolis; Providence, R.I.; Milwaukee; Seattle; Phoenix; and Toronto.
"There are lessons to learn from these cities," Bedoya said. "These are cities that have been successful in addressing the issue of artist-studio spaces and artist warehouse spaces."
Here is what some other cities have done:
Providence, R.I.
Providence was once nicknamed a "Beehive of Industry" for its bustling machinery, silverware, jewelry and textile trades.
But many of the businesses that earned the city its moniker during the 19th century fell victim to the Great Depression, then suburbanization, leaving Providence littered with abandoned old mills and empty warehouses.
Artists eventually found their way into these open spaces, many of them living and working within them illegally. Developers followed, buying the historic structures, displacing artists and turning the buildings into high-end lofts or tearing them down.
The eviction of well-respected Rhode Island artists from Fort Thunder, an underground arts center in an old textile factory, and the mill's subsequent destruction, led to the creation of the Partnership for Creative Industrial Space, an arts-advocacy group dedicated to creating affordable and sustainable commercial space in the city.
"We couldn't watch developers continue to displace businesses and artists and jobs for condo conversions," said the partnership's founder and co-director, Lisa Carnevale. "We needed a plan for industrial buildings."
The group worked with the city and the Providence Preservation Society to save more than 250 historic industrial buildings from being torn down. The city then passed an ordinance that gave all of those buildings an automatic variance that let artists live as well as work in them.
The partnership and the city also worked to pass a law giving artists in certain neighborhoods relief from sales and income taxes to help them afford their own buildings.
"When we talk about artists, we don't talk about them as just artists," Carnevale said. "We talk about them in terms of being individual businesses."
Kansas City, Mo.
Kansas City's Crossroads Arts District got its start in 1985 when sculptor Jim Leedy turned a long-vacant building in an industrial area near downtown into a gallery and art studio.
The area soon became a creative hub with more than 40 galleries and a popular First Fridays arts walk that brings in about 10,000 visitors monthly, said Suzie Aron, a real estate investor and former president of the Crossroads Community Association.
"In the beginning, nobody was legal, but nobody outside of the neighborhood gave a damn about the buildings so no one was looking at them," Aron said. "You could do the work yourself and not have to worry about the stringent codes the city used with other developers."
Now that the Crossroads is a premier destination in Kansas City, the association's main goal is keeping artists from being priced out of the area, Aron said.
Four years ago, she started working on a tax-abatement plan to let artists put money that would normally go into property taxes back into their buildings. The plan, which was approved by city earlier this year, also gives tax breaks to landlords willing to rent space at affordable prices to artists.
"We are perfectly willing to coexist with lofts and restaurants," Aron said. "But we are trying to maintain the integrity of the artists' right to be here."
Minneapolis
The Northeast Minneapolis Arts District was born from a migration of artists looking for a new home after being priced out of the revitalized warehouse district in downtown Minneapolis.
Led by an artist-run organization dubbed the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association, a 15-year action plan was created to transform 1 1/2 square miles of industrial space and factories and a brewery into a viable artists community.
The plan called for more galleries through financial incentives, temporary storefront exhibits and classes to teach artists how to become financially stable.
Five years into the plan, association president and sculptor Nicholas Legeros said the organization has achieved many of its goals and has worked closely with the city to help bring the area to life. Minneapolis designated the neighborhood an arts district in 2003 and developers, working with the arts district association, have turned many old industrial buildings into art studio space.
The district is home to more than 450 artists. Its annual Art-A-Whirl open gallery tour attracts 35,000 to 45,000 visitors a year, Legeros said.
The next big step, Legeros said, is to have the city declare the district an enterprise zone, which would mean a 50 percent drop in property taxes to artists and building owners inside the zone.
But whatever happens, Minneapolis once again has a home for artists.
"When people come here," Legeros said, "they know exactly where to go to find art."
● Contact reporter Andrea Kelly at 573-4243 or akelly@azstarnet.com. Contact reporter Gerald M. Gay at 573-4137 or ggay@azstarnet.com.
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