The city of Boston is seeking proposals for the redevelopment of the Bates Arts Resource Center at 731 Harrison Ave. and the development of two adjacent parcels into artists’ housing and work studios.
When a fire at an old shoe factory in Jamaica Plain displaced local artists 27 years ago, they approached city officials about relocating to a vacant elementary school building.
The city agreed to let the artists use the school and throughout the years, they raised money and secured loans and grants to renovate and convert the old school into an arts center. Gradually, the artists who used the building to practice their crafts also became a part of the community – assisting the city’s seniors citizens and youth with various projects.
Now, the South End building that local artists have called home for nearly three decades is poised to be redeveloped into artists’ workspace permanently, and two adjacent parcels may become live and work space for artists.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority last week issued a request for proposals for the redevelopment of the Harrison Avenue site known as the Bates Arts Resource Center. The RFP, crafted with the community through a yearlong public process, is the first time the city has ever sought the exclusive development of live/work space for artists.
“We’re very excited about it,” said Alan Michel, president of HOME Inc., a nonprofit group that manages the Bates Arts Resource Center. “We see it as a culmination of our vision for the arts center. We hope it will be a way for making a future that’s permanent for artists in terms of studio space.”
Some artists feel that the city is making a genuine effort to help sculptors, painters and other artists, who have been losing their live/work space in Boston to commercial and residential development. Boston has more than 2,000 artists’ studios but fewer than 300 are permanent, according to the city.
“In the past couple of years, the city has demonstrated a real commitment to helping artists secure work and live space,” said Cheryl Forte, a member of the Fort Point Cultural Coalition.
‘A Stable Place’
However, some critics say the city’s efforts are long overdue. Unlike the city, groups like the Fort Point Cultural Coalition, for example, recognized the need to preserve affordable live and work space for artists years ago.
The FPCC started creating artists’ housing and workspace in the Fort Point Channel area of Boston about 20 years ago. The coalition helped create 43 artists’ units at 249 A St., and 47 live/work studios for artists at 300 Summer St. The units are limited-equity cooperatives that are restricted for artists.
The FPCC is currently working with Cambridge-based Keen Development Corp. on Midway Studios, a project that will involve the renovation of three buildings totaling over 200,000 square feet into 89 live/work artists’ studios and theater space.
“Artists in Fort Point have really taken on the initiative to do it ourselves,” said Forte, who has worked in the Fort Point Channel area since the mid-1970s.
Still, Forte said Fort Point artists are “enthusiastic” about any efforts to create permanent space for artists, including the redevelopment of the Bates Arts Resource Center.
The arts center has been a temporary home to artists since 1976 when a fire destroyed the Thomas Plant Shoe Factory in Jamaica Plain, displacing more than 100 artists.
At the time of the fire, Michel, a founder of the center, was a graduate student sharing studio space in the factory building. Michel and other artists approached the city after the fire about relocating to the Joshua Bates Elementary School in the South End. The school, vacant for about two years, was one of several boarded-up school buildings in the city during the days of desegregation.
The city eventually agreed to lease the building to the artists, but the artists had to go through a formal rezoning process to use the building as artists’ studios. Michel and his colleagues established HOME Inc. (Here-In Our Motives Evolve), an organization that has devoted its time to developing arts and education projects for the community.
In the years that followed, the artists obtained grants and loans and raised money to make improvements to the aging building. Michel estimates that at least $250,000 has been spent on capital improvements to the center, which has provided 10 to 12 artists’ studios. The organization became involved in an energy conservation study, spending about $40,000 to make improvements to the boiler in the early 1990s.
About three years ago, with funding from the Massachusetts Historic Commission and several private foundations, the organization also completed a historic preservation study of the building, which was constructed in 1884. The study examined the site, suggesting that the two vacant parcels near the building could be developed into artist live and workspace.
That study, along with an Artist Space Survey of nearly 10,000 local artists by the BRA, helped the agency craft the RFP.
The RFP outlines a development concept that would provide affordable and permanent artist live/work, studio and cultural space at the site. The city would like to see the rehabilitation of the existing building so that it continues to serve as workspace for 14 artists, with the ground floor featuring retail space.
In addition, the city wants to see the construction of 65 units of artists’ live/work space on two vacant parcels that are adjacent to the former school.
HOME Inc., which for years operated under a month-to-month lease with the city, has a lease on the building that extends through the end of March 2005. Currently, the building is used by videographers, photographers, a collagist and other crafts people.
But besides using the building for workspace, the artists have been very involved in the community, said Michel. Bates artists helped high school students and senior citizens produce four videos on preventative health care for the elderly that were featured at a White House conference on aging in the late 1970s.
More recently, the artists have begun a project to assist teachers with integrating media literacy into curricula at three public high schools and three middle schools in Boston.
“Our belief is that the artists need to be incorporated into the community and that’s often not possible because they don’t have a stable place to do their work,” said Michel.
