Saving spaces

IT'S A COMMON STORY. First, artists move into rundown neighborhoods, the only places they can afford; they refurbish buildings and bring life and color to their new communities. Experimental jazz record producer Simon Grant, who grew up in San Francisco, describes what happens next: "Hey, cool, look at all these artists," newcomers exclaim, deciding to settle there themselves. "Pretty soon, the rents go up and all the real artists are gone." Painter Randy McCoy blames the "scenesters, the people who saw too much Flashdance in the '80s and think loft-living is where it's at, even if the only thing they make in their funky work/live space is a pile of discarded beer cans." He bitterly remembers living in Pioneer Square in the early '90s and having people throw rocks at his window from their shiny Volvos to ask if he had space to rent. "That's when we knew it was the beginning of the end," he says. And the end it was. The Pioneer Square that was an affordable haven for struggling young artists is gone. Take a recent classified ad for a one-bedroom, "New York-style loft." The rent was almost New York as well, just under $1,900 a month. Nor are any bargains left in Belltown, another former artists' cluster. The charmingly decrepit buildings once colonized by artists are now only legends, among them the 1020 Building, 66 Bell, Project 416, and the Washington Shoe Building. If the gentrification of Pioneer Square and Belltown followed a familiar script, it was hastened by a red-hot economy that has made almost every neighborhood in the city a target for development, leaving a burning question for artists: Where do we go now? This isn't only a dilemma for sculptors and jewelry designers. The value that artists bring to a city can't be measured in rents and sales tax. San Francisco is widely admired for its quirky, freethinking, and independent character, but the tsunami of dot-com money that swept through formerly affordable neighborhoods has left the city dramatically altered. Other cities have confronted similar problems with progressive ideas: Providence, R.I., for example, enacted a special downtown arts and entertainment zone in 1997, providing sales and income tax breaks to artists, as well as tax incentives to developers who convert their rundown properties into residential spaces.

Seattle residents should start asking themselves: What does a city look like if all the artists are gone?

Here we profile the development in Georgetown, a blue-collar neighborhood nestled between I-5, the mighty Duwamish, and Boeing Field that has become Seattle's last Mecca for cheap space; we also examine steps other regional cities are taking to attract artists. While Seattle grows ever more expensive, just 30 miles south in Tacoma, planners recognize that a city needs artists to have a soul.

THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING dilemma isn't unique to artists. But they have a harder time because they need space to store canvases and raw materials, walls they can splatter paint on, and neighbors that won't call the police when they're hammering out a masterpiece at midnight.

The old Pioneer Square finally died last spring with the ouster of dozens of artists working and living (illegally) in Shoe Building, the last of its kind to be redeveloped. Last summer, JEM Studios, the shoestring operation that managed artists' spaces in the Shoe, took over a new building in Georgetown. Industrial businesses dominate the neighborhood just south of SoDo where a smattering of artists have been moving in. "I think this is the last neighborhood," says JEM's Christine Morgan.

She and her boss Eddie Maurer, both painters, have big plans. "We hope to make Georgetown a new 'Arts Destination Point,'" they wrote in an e-mail. They have significant ambitions for their two-story former bank building, called the Horton. In addition to the 25 live/work studios they have created, they want to start a coffee shop, theater, and gallery.

It seems a grand plan for the former proprietors of the dive that was the Shoe. Given the desperate space crunch for artists, however, some people want this to happen: A nonprofit, JEM has already received a $100,000 loan from an anonymous family that stepped forward during the Shoe ouster.

At first Maurer and Morgan thought they would use the money to buy a building, but they ended up in failed bidding wars. Depressed, Maurer fled for Costa Rica. Then, in July, he got an e-mail from his arts-minded banker who told him of a building in Georgetown she had just sold. Maurer hopped on a plane and soon had an unusually long 15-year lease.

Recently home to a low-rent hotel, the building was, Maurer says, "in incredibly bad condition." The roof leaked; the plumbing didn't work; and it was filled with piles of mattresses and other junk. With the landlord's help, he and Morgan made basic repairs and let it be known that "semi-rough but habitable" live/work space was now for rent. Artists came running; every studio but one is full.

Lenora Benjamin, a wardrobe designer married to a photographer, stands in the middle of the couple's space at the Horton. A composite of four old hotel rooms, it is one of the largest in the building, 1,000 square feet for $975 a month. The space is mostly empty but has an appealing feel. A handsome four-poster bed sits on the "original fir" floors. One wall is exposed brick; others are painted turquoise and pale pink. Benjamin, a young woman with short red hair peeking out of a black knit cap, logged 20 hours with a sander restoring the floors. She peeled off layer after layer of paint.