Will S.F. landlords paint artists into a corner or help them bloom?
by Cory Weinberg
San Francisco’s expensive real estate market has created a bleak portrait for artists who have welded, painted, dyed and photographed through the city’s ups and downs. Evidence has piled up lately that the city’s artists are leaving for Oakland, Los Angeles or abroad for cheaper work and living space.
In many cases in the Mission and SoMa, landlords have the zoning rights to turn artist spaces into more profitable residential or office uses. Artists’ average rent is about $21 a square foot each year ($1.75 a month), according to the San Francisco Arts Commission – about a third what landlords can get for housing or office. That has set up several contentious bouts of developers vs. artists this year at the city’s Planning Commission.
But in one case, artists now are getting a hand from an unlikely source: savvy Silicon Valley financiers.
Andrew and Deborah Rappaport are figuring out how to bend a piece of the real estate market to favor artists. The philanthropists and art collectors have bought or leased three buildings in the Dogpatch neighborhood to house art galleries and work space for about 35 artists.
The buildings are all zoned for production, distribution and repair (PDR) use, which has strict requirements that doesn’t allow residential or tech office use but allows artists. That created what Andrew Rappaport described as an “arbitrage opportunity” to buy buildings on the cheap.
“Owners get to determine what happens to their buildings,” said Rappaport, now managing partner of Skyline Public Works and former venture capitalist partner at Sand Hill Road’s August Capital. “What we’d really like to do is encourage other people to acquire PDR zoned buildings for purposes similar to our spirit of our acquiring them.”
Their spirit is ambitious for the so-called Minnesota Street Project. They want the trio of buildings to become part an arts oasis that fits into the growing spate of galleries and museums in the eastern Mission District, Potrero Hill and Dogpatch.
The Rappaports just leased a 70,000-square-foot building nearby to complement already-controlled 1240 Minnesota St. and 1275 Minnesota St. The former will house artists studios while the new building and 1275 Minnesota will house art galleries, arts-related nonprofits, and an art-services businesses the Rappaports will run.
Brion Nuda Rosch sculpts, paints and photographs out of his San Francisco basement office, but will now run the studio program for the Minnesota Street Project. Without the job, he said he’d likely have to move to New York or Los Angeles as San Francisco galleries close and housing prices rise.
“Creative individuals have always come up against odds in the way they need to be creative and cohabit space,” he said. “Our goal is to create a destination with people who wish to engage with the arts.”
Displacement looms
All around the Rappaport’s project, things aren’t so hopeful.
Nearly 70 percent of 356 San Francisco artists surveyed by the Arts Commission last month said their workspace leases have not or will not be renewed for reasons like building conversions, rent increases or new landlords.
In the South of Market neighborhood, 60 percent of 150,000 square feet of artist space surveyed by the TODO Group last month was found to be privately owned, leaving artists vulnerable to displacement and rent increases.
“Artists are going to be wiped out. It’s alarming,” said John Elberling of TODCO, a longtime SoMa activist.
The 43 artists at SoMa Artist Studios at 689 Bryant St are sandwiched between a largest homeless shelter and tech startup offices in a 17,000-square-foot space zoned for arts and light industrial use.
But the 25-year-old studio faces a big rent increase (from $13.40 to $22.60 a square foot annually) and their lease comes to an end in November. Their new rent increase would reach about market rate for artist space.
Some artists may end up working at home, or moving workspace to cheaper neighborhoods like Bayview. But open houses in shared studio spaces with high-foot-traffic areas (near AT&T Park) has helped artists at the SoMa studios get exposure, said Jana Grover, a contemporary artist there who creates paintings and installations.
“There are people all over the city with individual studios, but they don’t get the traffic like we get because it’s one big place,” she said. “There will always be little studios. People have studios in their house and can’t afford to come to a place like this, but the benefit is having more of the city see you.”
Potential aids
The Arts Commission report points to a potential increase in funding for artist grants as a piece of the solution for artist displacement. Mega developments on the southeast waterfront like the Shipyard and India Basin will also reserve space for artists. The nonprofit Artspan is also working with developers to connect them with other arts groups.
"Given the intensity of the real estate market, we need to look at long term solutions. But if someone is being moved out in 30 days, we need to find them a place to land right away," said Tom DeCaigny, the Arts Commission's director of cultural affairs. "There's a multi-pronged approach, but we're hoping developers will step forward and host studios and artist spaces."
But the bigger shift will likely center on zoning.
The rezoning of the area known as Central SoMa – which spans from 2nd to 6th Streets and Market to Townsend – will likely require office and housing developers to retain some production, distribution and repair space for artists and makers.
But some zoned space isn’t guaranteed to go to artists specifically, considering that commercial landlords aren’t bound to rent control. Buildings zoned for arts or maker uses could likely still find a technology company that also manufactures hardware that can afford more expensive spaces.
“There’s no real strategy to get space in the city for arts. There just isn’t,” Elberling said.
That’s in part why the Rappaports want the private market to help fill some of the void – buying buildings for artists and holding the as affordable.
“An integral part of our program is to provide something cheap in 2016 or 2017, and to impose on ourselves rent control. We’ll at least provide (artists) a succession of options to maintain low rent,”Deborah Rappaport said. “We think and we hope to convince people to stay in business.”