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CITIES BENEFIT FROM USING
THE ARTS AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL

Charlottesville, Virginia may have fewer than 50,000 residents, but its vibrant arts community creates a quality of life that ranked the home of the University of Virginia as the best place to live in the United States in the book Cities Ranked and Rated.

In 1976, the City of Charlottesville turned a decommissioned 1916 Federalist style brick school building into the McGuffey Art Center -- a vibrant place where dozens of artists rent studio space far below market rate.

In return for low rent, artists agree to open their studio spaces to the public for a required minimum of at least 17.5 hours per week.
"It humanizes the process -- people walk right in to your studio and begin to realize there are flesh and blood people making these things and these people have a role in the community," said sculptor Jim Respess, who has been at McGuffey for two decades and chairs its gallery committee. "It's a nice fit: we have a really nice exhibition space, but the lion's share of what goes on at McGuffey is people can walk in `and see the dirt on the floor' -- the process (of marking art) unfolding."

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CITIES BENEFIT FROM USING
THE ARTS AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL

Chris Velasco, who founded PLACE in 2005 and serves as its President and Executive Director, has been actively engaged in the creation of innovative communities and sustainable facilities for 16 years. He has worked in more than 200 communities, creating more than $350 million worth of new, arts-centered facilities.

"Art is fundamentally a process and not a product," Velasco said. "There is a strong temptation to go to a museum and say `this is where art lives,' but it really takes place over a cup of coffee talking with an artist over their canvas, or in a loft with the dancers creating their dance. That is why I have spent nearly two decades of my life building very specialized spaces for the arts."

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CITIES BENEFIT FROM USING
THE ARTS AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL

Realtor Doug Moe, of Keller Williams Realty, has been selling homes and taken an active role in the Ventura community since 1976. Charged with selling the market rate, solar-powered, double-floor, loft condominiums at WAV, he is a huge supporter of the diverse development.

"When I really found out exactly what was going on at WAV, I thought `man, somebody did something great to get Ventura this fabulous project to completion in this economy,'" Moe said. "There were 800 applicants for the 54 units of artist housing -- that tells you how popular this is."

"This is very important to the residents of Ventura -- we see what's going on with the environment., we want a higher quality of living," he continued. "WAV addresses so many issues important to us -- affordable housing, having different segments of society living here. WAV also demonstrates that you can build affordable housing that is LEED certified and that you can build a mixed income gem like this without the city pouring money into it."

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CITIES BENEFIT FROM USING
THE ARTS AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL

"The WAV is an economic engine and a cultural force," said Ventura City Manager Rick Cole. "It brings scores of artists into permanent residence in our downtown, provides an accessible new performance space, provides a home to individuals and families climbing out of homelessness and represents an exciting mix of uses and incomes. On top of all that, the LEED certification validates the vision that brought this unique community-within-a-community into being."
"At a time when every other mixed use and housing development stalled, the WAV opened to rave reviews," Cole added "It has kept the momentum going by bringing exciting new life to our historic downtown."

The sustainable structure -- developed by the Minneapolis-based nonprofit PLACE -- Projects Linking Art, Community & Environment -- has 6,100 square feet of ground floor space for arts-friendly businesses such as coffee houses, galleries and sidewalk cafes.

WAV provides affordable living and working space for over one hundred artists of every kind including painters, sculptors, dancers, poets, musicians and filmmakers. The WAV Theater Gallery offers performances, art openings and public gatherings.

CULTIVATING THE ARTS

CITIES BENEFIT FROM USING
THE ARTS AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL

By Steve Wright

From almost the beginning of time, the arts have been supported by everyone from monarchs to popes to commoners because of their humane, beautiful, spiritual, and life-affirming qualities.

In these challenging economic times, an equal argument can be made for valuing the arts like precious infrastructure, as important to cities as walkability, transit and parkland and as essential as streets, water and sewer lines.

Countless cities -- from obscure to famous, from modest to sophisticated -- have used the arts to revitalize old neighborhoods, create nightlife in fading downtowns and spur economic development in tough times.

In Ventura, California, the arts are at the center of a landmark development that combines market rate condominiums, affordable space for artists and even transitional housing for formerly homeless people -- all in a LEED-certified green building that is just a few blocks from both downtown shopping and the Pacific Coast beach.

The $61 million mixed-use, mixed income utopia is called WAV -- Working Artists Ventura. It has 54 live-work units for artists with monthly rents starting at $400. The top floor features market-rate lofts selling for more than half a million per unit -- which helps subsidize the cost of the affordable units. There are also 15 units of transitional housing available for low income renters who do not have to be artists.

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"We can make a profound difference by creating the exemplar --the model that is so powerful it changes the way we do things," he said. "There is this thought that it costs too much to build sustainably. But when we created the most sustainable building ever created in Ventura, we showed that you could build sustainable for the same cost as non-sustainable. We showed that if PLACE can figure out how to build sustainable housing marketed to homeless people and stay within budget, then other developers can certainly build sustainable for market rate condo and malls. We believe it isn't ethical anymore to create a community that isn't sustainable."

Velasco said PLACE is very focused on social justice and making sure everyone benefits from the enrichment of communities through the arts. In the WAV artist live-work and mixed use building in Ventura, California, more than 140 meetings were held before construction commenced -- to ensure that every element of the project was compatible to every element of the community.

"There is a lot of talk around the country about how the arts are a powerful gentrification force in a community. People say `isn't this (project) going to gentrify the area?' and the answer is `it sure seems that way, pretty reliably,'" Velasco said. "If we do assume that (the arts will bring gentrification), then the key is to ask ourselves `how do we make sure there are opportunities for persons from every income level to benefit in the growth in value?` "


Wright frequently writes about Smart Growth and sustainable communities. He and his wife live in a restored historic home in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana. Contact him at: stevewright64@yahoo.com

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Velasco, who founded PLACE in 2005, has created projects that have won numerous awards from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Institute of Architects.

"A solution to many of the problems we are facing starts where you live," he said of PLACE's commitment to building affordable, zero carbon, zero waste holistic communities powered by the sun, wind and earth. "Look at the amount of energy we consume in buildings. How we look at the creation of communities is important for the problems of the 21st century. (We must look at) how we deal with people who are different from us and involve them in opportunities to thrive. Fixing the commute problem, the carbon problem and the poverty problem -- you'd be hard pressed to find a more pressing problems."

Velasco, who was invited to submit an opinion paper to then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on environmental policy for her Strategic Energy Fund, is a frequent keynote speaker in the areas of sustainable arts, live-work communities, ethical development, community and economic revitalization and the environment.