I recently had the opportunity to lead a panel discussion titled, Making the Livable City for the Creative Class, which centered on providing infrastructure to support the local arts community. While affordable housing was a common a concern for artists, another focus was on expanding accommodations for artists to create and share their work. More established artists have studio space and support facilities in the city, and there are a growing number of exhibition opportunities as more restaurants share their walls with the creative community. Unfortunately, however, exhibit space still limits Long Beach’s ability to promote the arts community, much less meet its current needs.
To begin, there should be a healthy discussion regarding whether or not it is government’s role to support the arts. Ideally, artists should be able to support themselves with the help of their patrons. At the same time, city staff and elected officials should see the arts as an industry worth an investment on the part of municipal government. Investment in arts infrastructure is little different from subsidizing new commercial projects in redevelopment areas or providing micro-loans to start-up businesses in the city’s enterprise zone. Investment in arts brings many returns to the city including sales and arts based tourism.
Much of the effort to create a geographic focus for the arts has taken the form of developing the East Village Arts District downtown. Long Beach’s Redevelopment Agency has subsidized the creation of artist facilities, including housing, studios, and galleries in this district. The East Village community deserves praise for its continued efforts: sponsoring art walks and festivals, creating public art and advocating for city services. Still, the efforts of the city and community have yet to reach the critical mass necessary for a self-sustaining arts community.
My advice during the panel discussion was to be creative about how to address the shortcomings of the geographically defined East Village Arts District and the city at large. Because resources are limited, typical brick-and-mortar strategies of building museums and galleries are likely infeasible. To begin, I suggested we look to other arts communities for what they have done to address issues that could potentially be applied to Long Beach as well. From Santa Ana to Seattle, we can find precedents for creating the infrastructure necessary to supporting a healthy arts community.
Over the past decade, the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency—in partnership with a variety of developers and property owners—has developed a number of artist lofts. They have largely done this by converting underutilized commercial spaces into affordable live/work spaces for artists. This was not a novel concept, but something adapted from Santa Ana and Los Angeles, which adapted their respective building codes to better facilitate such conversions. But limited available commercial space remains in the East Village which has led artists to explore some of Long Beach’s industrial areas for more inexpensive shelter drawing potential energy away from the arts district.
During Seattle’s initial period of downtown revitalization, artist studios and galleries began springing up in long-vacant, ground-floor commercial spaces. They provided positive street activity that made it safer for people to come downtown to live, work, and play. This in turn brought investment in the form of new construction and the opening of chain stores and restaurants. These factors acted to reduce the inventory of available storefronts, eventually raising the cost of rent for remaining ground-floor spaces.
While many of those artists involved in the initial wave into downtown Seattle were forced out, others went underground instead. A quirk in the history of Seattle’s development, the Pioneer Square area near the waterfront created an ideal environment for art to go underground. Because of constant flooding during high tides, the city embarked on an aggressive strategy in the beginning of the nineteenth century to raise that portion of the city a full level. For entire blocks the original second floor became the street level, while the existing ground floor became basements. Today, there are literally acres of cheap space available for artists just below the surface, allowing this arts community to flourish in spite of market conditions that would otherwise drive them out.
While Long Beach does not quite have such an interesting relationship with the subterranean realm there is nonetheless a significant amount of unused and under-utilized basement area in the downtown. For instance, there are nearly three acres of vacant basement space, distributed between about dozen historic buildings downtown that could be converted to arts-related uses with modest investment. They include the Lafayette residential at Broadway and Linden, the Arts Building on 3rd Street as well as the most noteworthy subterranean environ; the Jergins Subway at Pine Avenue and Ocean Boulevard. Repurposing these basements will require collaboration with local building officials to create safe environments while avoiding unnecessary modifications to the existing structures. This is not unlike the effort that Long Beach embarked upon when creating the live/work loft conversion ordinances.
Imagine a mixture of arts facilities, from performance spaces to studios and galleries the size of a Target department store, all within walking distance of Pine Avenue, the East Village Arts District, the transit center, a dozen hotels, and thousands of new residents. One would be hard-put to find better placement for such facilities. These new arts facilities could build upon the existing urban fabric to provide another level of positive activity downtown. Such an infusion of arts infrastructure would likely go far towards creating a necessary critical mass for the East Village Arts District, not to mention Long Beach’s entire arts community.
