Arts
Master Plan for Warehouse District Coming Together
By James Reel
ver the past few months, trust and enthusiasm have slowly been replacing the fear in Tucson’s Warehouse District.
Not fear for one’s safety at night, but fear that the artists who have been working there for 15 years will be driven out by dramatic rent increases, fear that the artists’ work spaces will be converted into little shops and restaurants, fear (on the part of some city officials) that artist intransigence may stall the redevelopment of what until the 1990s was Downtown’s most derelict area, fear that everyone’s conflicting grand plans will be moot in 10 years if the final leg of the Barraza-Aviation Parkway rips through the area.
Barraza-Aviation is still a huge question, “a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the District,” according to architect and planner Corky Poster. But in other respects, Poster says he was excited by the greeting the current incarnation of a master plan for the area received at a Jan. 15 public meeting.
Poster Frost Associates and the Tucson Arts District Partnership, Inc. intend to have that plan finalized by the end of March. Developing a plan and a vision for the Warehouse District is a fine thing, but it will take something more to make the plan a reality on the street, according to Poster.
“First,” he says, “it’ll take a consensus on the part of everybody involved that this is the right thing to do. Nobody wants to touch it if there’s not a consensus. Then it’ll take smart people to mobilize the resources and make it happen.”
Poster is confident that the smart people are already in place. All we need now is some agreement about what those smart people should do.
The elements of the plan Poster presented at the January meeting include, among other things, moving the Barraza-Aviation alignment north of the railroad tracks west of Sixth Avenue to preserve the warehouses along Toole; allowing the artists and warehouse tenants themselves to shape policies on tenant selection and rent for the state-owned/city-operated warehouses; improving building safety and appearance; reconfiguring the north side of Toole as a 25-foot-wide urban artwalk; outlining marketing and programming goals; and turning four big parking lots in the area into mostly mixed-use developments with spaces for housing, art production and retail.
The plan seems aimed to please several constituencies. The retail element links the district conceptually to the shops and entertainment venues of Congress Street, Fourth Avenue and the Lost Barrio; the housing provision ties in with the current big push to bring residents Downtown; while maintaining the warehouses as places where artists actually create, not just sell, art (and where the public can see them do it) preserves the element that many artists regard as most essential for the district. Thus, the area would have a distinct character while maintaining strong links to what the Tucson Arts District Partnership calls the myriad unique “arts clusters” that constitute the Arts District.
“Yeah, it’s ambitious,” says Poster, “but it’s not structured in such a way that a failure in Step One stymies all your future efforts. If there’s a constituency for any of those projects, they can move forward no matter what happens to the others.”
Warehouse District planners have been studying similar redevelopment projects in such cities as Minneapolis, Jersey City, Pittsburgh, Providence, and Alexandria, Virginia, home of the Torpedo Factory, a World War I munitions plant that began undergoing a conversion to arts and retail uses in 1974.
To obtain studio space in the Torpedo Factory, artists must go through a jurying process. The artists can’t live on the site, but they do sell from their own studios. The Torpedo Factory is now a glamorous center for 165 artists with cooperative galleries, an archaeology museum and 800,000 visitors per year. But it started out, frankly, as a dump.
“In the beginning, we had to run around finding used furniture and pedestals we could recycle,” says potter Isabel Lee, who’s been at the Torpedo Factory since 1974. “We just made do. Everybody pitched in and helped. Now it looks like a New York place.”
In 1983, as part of a sale/lease-back agreement using special federal tax provisions allowing for renovation of historic buildings, the Torpedo Factory was sold to Alexandria Art Center Associates, leased back from AACA by the City of Alexandria, and subleased to the Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association.
In the lease agreement that ran from 1983 to 1998, the City was responsible for many operating costs, a percentage of real estate taxes, and one-third of the utilities in addition to annual rent payments. The City and the artists have split equally the operating costs of the art center, including the payroll for city staff.
In 1998 the Alexandria City Council repurchased the building and assigned its management to the artists’ association. Factored into the artists’ rent were the repurchase cost in excess of the initial balloon payment, including 62 percent (a number based on the artist-occupied percentage of the building) of the interest, general service operating costs, and all future maintenance and repair costs excluding exterior repairs. The artists are responsible for 62 percent of utility costs. All other operating costs are borne by the artists.
Perhaps some elements of this successful arrangement could be adapted to Tucson’s Warehouse District. Another place to look for inspiration is Bethesda, Maryland, where the Bethesda Urban Partnership, a private organization, oversees a 300-acre arts and entertainment district.
In Bethesda, developers who apply themselves to at least 22,000 square feet of space are allowed to develop increased density if they allot 20 percent of the overall footprint to public amenities like green space. Plans are afoot to allow even greater density if the developer reserves some of the interior for galleries or live-work spaces.
The state of Maryland forgives sales tax on art produced within the district. Another economic incentive: When a building in the district is restored, the property is not assessed at its new, greater value; property taxes remain the same. This is an important consideration in a place where space goes for $35 per square foot.
Seventy-eight percent of the district’s budget comes not from the same government pot that funds education and libraries, but from nearly 7,500 metered parking spaces (mostly in garages) owned by the Urban Partnership. “These create close to $7.4 million in annual revenue, plus $3.9 million worth of fines when people don’t pay the meters,” says Bethesda Urban Partnership executive director W. David Dabney. “So there’s a very strong revenue stream here.”
The secret to Bethesda’s success is not just money, Dabney states. “Our board includes developers, members of the chamber of commerce, residents, and owners of small retail businesses,” he says. “So the consensus really includes all the players in the community.”
That kind of consensus, Corky Poster says, is exactly what we need to create a thriving, productive and sustainable Tucson Warehouse Historic District.
Adds Tucson Arts District Partnership executive director Vera Uyehara, “The Tucson Arts District Partnership is very encouraged by the positive ideas and creative thinking that has grown from the master planning process beginning last spring. The Warehouse District Master Planning effort, and the preservation of the unique community of artists living and working in the warehouses, are central to the mission of the Arts District Partnership, as it works to protect and enhance the arts and cultural assets of Tucson.”
