How Artist Space Matters

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Do artist spaces matter, and if so, how? To address this research question, Metris Arts Consulting took an in-depth look at how three case study artist spaces benefit in-house artists and arts organizations, their neighborhoods and regions. Artspace Projects, a leading national nonprofit real estate developer for the arts, developed each case study space: the Northern Warehouse Artists’ Cooperative, Tilsner Artist Cooperative, and Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art. Artspace commissioned this study, with funding from LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity), for two aims. First, it plans to use findings to shape service delivery to more effectively meet its core mission of creating, fostering, and preserving affordable space for artists and arts organizations, as well as to support broad community objectives. Secondly, Artspace seeks to provide artists, funders, local governments, and communities with objective data on the impacts of artist spaces.

By drawing on a range of research methods, we documented the artist spaces’ contributions to neighborhood change and their perceived social, physical, and economic value. Our mixed method approach combined interviewing artists, residents, business owners, government officials, and others; surveying arts tenants; analyzing tenant income records and historical trends in socioeconomic data (Census, County and Zip Code Business Patterns); and measuring property value impacts through hedonic modeling, a statistical method used to calculate appreciation in property values and estimate the portion of the change that is attributable to the artist space.

Overall, these artist spaces have produced clear benefits for in-house arts tenants and the surrounding neighborhood and region. However, community members perceived the Northern and Tilsner to have contributed relatively more towards revitalization in St. Paul’s Lowertown than the Traffic Zone has done for Minneapolis’ North Loop, whereas the Traffic Zone artists demonstrated the highest levels of satisfaction. We not only detail impacts, but also synthesize which factors appear to enhance or limit benefits.

Much of the variation between projects stems from differing neighborhood contexts, the specific objectives for each project and alternate physical designs and operational structures. In Lowertown, Artspace developed the Tilsner and Northern in conjunction with broad-based revitalization efforts. In contrast, rising rents and condo conversions in the North Loop propelled the Traffic Zone artists to secure space. The Tilsner is solely artist live/work space, whereas the Northern also hosts commercial tenants. Due to Low Income Housing Tax Credit financing, Northern and Tilsner artists must meet income restrictions to become tenants. The Traffic Zone provides studio-only space to 23 mid-career artists who co-own the building with Artspace.

Through a survey, interviews and an analysis of artist income records, we found strong evidence that the Northern, Tilsner, and Traffic Zone benefit arts tenants. Majorities of artists indicated their spaces “worked” for them, physically meeting their needs and with respect to affordability. The North5