Fifteen artists applied to live in one apartment at AS220 in December. Vacancies at the one-stop venue for living, working and exhibition space happen only once or twice a year. Rents range from $180 to $325 per month for the 12 residential units on AS220’s third floor, considered some of the most affordable housing for artists in downtown Providence.
Though artists in the Providence area are among thousands suffering from a lack of affordable housing in Rhode Island, providing enough low-cost places for the creative populace to work and live is deemed vital to sustain the city’s reputation as a haven for the arts.
“We have really modeled ourselves as a creative city, as an artist-friendly city, as a center for vital artistic activity – that has become a brand for Providence,” said Umberto Crenca, artistic director of AS220. “People coming from out of town expect to see that when they come to the city.”
“Cities that have strong artist communities attract other talented, creative people,” Crenca said. “They attract engineers, designers and other kinds of creative people that are more formally integrated into the (economy).”
Yet the road to creating and keeping spaces affordable for artists is jammed with impediments such as spiraling construction costs, stricter building codes and rising property values. These factors threaten to gentrify communities where artists have thrived for years.
“I think it is about to happen or is happening in the West Side of Providence,” said Laura Mullen, an advocate of artist affordable live and work spaces for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.
Once serving as cheap studio space for local artists, old mill buildings in neighborhoods such as Olneyville have become a hot commodity for developers, who are buying the industrial sites and converting them into condos and commercial spaces at a record pace. The trend has displaced artists unable to afford the rents once the brick buildings are renovated, Mullen said.
The arts council identified this problem two years ago, and teamed with the R.I. Citizens for the Arts and the state Housing Network to hire Mullen as an independent contractor last September. Her charge was to study and address the needs for affordable apartments and studios for artists. That led to an ongoing survey of artists, with 85 percent of some 300 respondents to date saying they were in search of affordable living or working space, she said.
About 60 percent of artists surveyed reported annual incomes of less than $25,000, meaning many of them qualify as “working poor,” Mullen said. The survey has underscored the need for affordable housing and studio spaces.
It’s no secret that some artists still save money by living illegally in industrial buildings leased as studio space.
Leonard E. Lavoie, of Rhode Island Commercial Industrial Realty, who rents work studios to artists in the Providence area, said he had to call police to remove a woman he found wearing a bathrobe and slippers in one of the studio buildings on a Saturday morning.
“Too many young, struggling artists … think they can move into an industrial building and live there, but they can’t anymore,” Lavoie said. City officials and landlords are cracking down on artists inhabiting work studios, especially since The Station nightclub disaster, he added.
Keeping rents cheap for art studios is becoming more difficult, Lavoie said, adding that the cost of bringing former mill buildings up to code has only increased rents. He noted that a new fire alarm system for the fourth floor of a Providence mill was quoted at $27,000 last year, but after the state enacted its updated fire codes in February, his firm had to spend $107,000 to comply with the law change.
Renovated work studios carry monthly rents of $5 to $9 per square foot, Lavoie said.
Those rates translate to $2,500 to $4,500 per month for a 500-square-foot studio.
Meanwhile, artists from all over the country are gravitating to Providence and Pawtucket, wanting to be part of the area’s evolving arts scene. Having leased space to about 500 artists in the past eight years, Lavoie said he recently helped artists from Texas and Pennsylvania find studio space in the area.
Artists, wanting to create spaces of their own, have taken on the role of developer.
A collaborative of sculptors, blacksmiths and welders acquired an industrial site at 27 Sims St. in Providence to form The Steel Yard, which offers studio space and educational programs.
Nick Bauta, one of The Steel Yard’s founders, has bought abandoned Providence Fire House No. 13 at 41 Central St. His plans include converting the ground floor into a gallery and music venue. The second floor, where firemen once bunked, has eight low-cost, temporary apartments.
“We hope to keep the flow of people changing, and bring artists from abroad to Providence,” Bauta, a 1999 RISD graduate, said in an interview last month.
AS220 has acquired and plans to renovate the historic Dreyfus Hotel at 121 Washington St. in Providence’s Downcity. The top two floors of the four-story building will consist of 14 to 16 apartments for artists, with rents of around $500 a month, said Lucie Searle, project manager for the nonprofit. The second floor will have 10 artist studios, which will rent for about $300 per month. Beginning late this year, the $5 million project is expected to conclude by fall of 2006.
West Elmwood Housing Development Corporation, a Providence nonprofit, plans to offer 22 affordable loft-style apartments for $500 per month by December, according to the group. The lofts are in a converted mill building on Westfield Street in South Providence.
Still, these artist-driven projects are more the exception than the norm for development in Providence, said Mullen. “I think there is a lot of good will in the (private-sector) development community, but most of them are not well-equipped to provide affordable housing like nonprofits.”
That’s perhaps why local nonprofit PUENTE has partnered with Baltimore-based developer Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse Inc. to include 30 affordable housing units targeting the artist community in a mill redevelopment project at 60 Valley St. in Olneyville.
Downcity developer Cornish Associates currently has affordable housing units among the 36 loft-style apartments in its Smith Building on Fulton Street, as well.
City officials in Providence and Pawtucket are also taking steps to assure that the metro area remains affordable for artists.
“Artists are a very important part of our economy, so we want to be able to accommodate them,” said Cliff Wood, director of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture and Tourism. “It’s a concern to us, and that’s why it is a priority of the administration.”
The city was an advocate of extending the downtown arts and entertainment district to include parts of the West Side. The General Assembly this past legislative session approved expanding the district, where artists are exempt from state sales and income taxes.
Pawtucket’s arts district has also helped revive its downtown area, said Herb Weiss, the city’s economic and cultural affairs officers. The city has hired an outside consultant to help guide its continued growth as an arts center.
The city of Pawtucket does not want to become another SoHo (in New York City),” Weiss said, “where artists come in and then are priced out through gentrification.”
