UPDATE: Good news! Arts Gowanus announced today that the 28 artists at Spaceworks' 540 President Street location will not have to move.
"We are happy to announce that the landlord has agreed to allow the artists to stay and has given them an option to extend their leases AND the artists who have opted to vacate have all been given an extended move out period of one month beyond whenever the stay at home mandate ends," an email from Arts Gowanus sent on May 8 reads. "We are thrilled with these developments!" The note goes on to thank ArtBuilt, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Council Member Brad Lander for their help and support during the ordeal. [Post updated May, 8, 2020.]
Amid a worldwide health crisis, a shelter-in-place order for New York State, and millions of lost jobs, a group of artists in Gowanus faces another challenge—the loss of their studios and the threat of having to relocate during a pandemic.
28 artists will have to vacate their studios at Spaceworks in Gowanus by May 25, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Arts Gowanus)
Non-profit Spaceworks announced on March 31 that it is going out of business and all of its affordable artist facilities will close. “It is with heavy heart that we inform you that after much consideration, Spaceworks will be closing our doors this spring,” the email announcement began. Launched in 2012 to “address issues of space affordability for artists in New York City,” Spaceworks has locations in the Bronx, Williamsburg, Long Island City, and Gowanus.
“We have worked very hard in trying to reach our mission. Along the way, there have been many tests and victories. Ultimately, we could not create a path that would enable Spaceworks to achieve short or long-term financial stability given our organizational and operating constraints,” the message added. The closure will affect the 28 artists who work from the Gowanus facility at 540 President Street.
A representative for Spaceworks, when asked for more details, stated briefly via email that all Spacesworks facilities “will be returned to landlords or institutions as operations cease in accordance with agreements in place.” The organization is “working with landlords, artists, and other stakeholders to determine a path forward for each location which includes rent waivers, flexible move-out dates where possible, and the provision of move-out materials.” The representative noted, “It has been an honor to serve the NYC cultural community.”
“No one thought our studios were in peril.”
A few days before the announcement was made public, Spaceworks notified each of the artists in Gowanus, according to Johnny Thornton, Executive Director of Arts Gowanus. The artists were informed they would have to move out by May 25 and encouraged to contact the landlord of the building, PDS Development Corporation, to try to negotiate a new lease with them directly, he added. “Spaceworks has been a great resource for artists in Gowanus, so everyone was very sad at the news,” Thornton said over the phone last Friday. “Though we were all sad, no one thought our studios were in peril.”
“At the same time they gave us the official closure notification, Spaceworks also suggested we contact the landlord directly to indicate our interest in remaining in the space, and work out new leases with them,” recalls Marlene Weisman, an artist who has been renting at Spaceworks for a year and a half. “Since we are a tight-knit artist community…that would have been a welcome solution…. I would have loved to continue working along with this group of artists. Several of us did reach out individually and received no response from the landlord, nor any updates from Spaceworks for quite a long time after that.” Weisman said she waited patiently as the days passed, assuming the situation would be resolved because, as she put it, “How would anyone expect us to move out during a deadly pandemic?”
“The safety of the artists, that’s our first concern.”
After days of silence “Arts Gowanus stepped in and said, ‘We need to figure this out,’” according to Thornton. Headquartered at the Spaceworks President Street location, Arts Gowanus is a not-for-profit organization that has been supporting, promoting, and advocating for local artists and a sustainable arts community in Brooklyn since 1996.
Spaceworks serves as “an intermediary for that [President Street] space,” Thornton explained. “They have a management contract with PDS…[Spaceworks is] sort of a middleman. They collect rent and manage the space for PDS.” Thornton tracked down the PDS principal in charge of the President Street building. He was told that the firm is not interested in leasing directly to the artists and the property would have to be vacated at the end of the Spaceworks contract. Pleas for a short-term solution—such as Arts Gowanus temporarily overseeing the space to “keep these artists from having to move in the middle of a global pandemic”—“fell on deaf ears,” according to Thornton. PDS Development did not respond to a request for comment.
After speaking to PDS, Thornton informed the artists through a Zoom conference that they could not stay. Spaceworks confirmed they had to leave and added that any artwork, materials, or equipment left in the space “could be considered abandoned and be thrown away,” according to Thornton. “That’s when everyone got a little angry.”
“Since we all value our artwork,” Weisman added, “it’s unnerving and heartbreaking to think leaving it in our studios will put it in harm’s way if we choose our own safety over our artwork.” During another Zoom conference with Spaceworks and the artists last week, Thornton asked the non-profit not to discard the artists’ belongings if they could not be safely retrieved by the deadline. “They wouldn’t give me that guarantee,” he said.
“I think that having artists choose between their safety and their possessions is very unethical in the middle of a global pandemic,” Thornton said, noting that there is at least one artist at the Gowanus facility who has experienced COVID-19 symptoms and another who is immuno-compromised. “Even though there’s a moratorium on evictions, Spaceworks is going out of business, so it’s sort of a tricky legal situation,” he said.
The interior of Spaceworks at 540 President Street, Gowanus. (Photo courtesy of Arts Gowanus)
During our telephone conversation on Friday, April 17, Thornton received an email from Spaceworks with some encouraging news. The message stated that Spaceworks will waive May rent for the artists and added that safety protocols have been put in place to limit the number of people in the facility at a given time. They also promised that any possessions left in the studios would not be trashed “without first contacting the artist,” Thornton said with relief. “But for me that still doesn’t really help matters because people still have to leave their homes [to clear out their studios].”
“At least they’ve done a few things to mitigate,” he continued. “I don’t feel it’s responsible to ask anyone to leave their house and I don’t think that’s changed. We have a stay-at-home order until May 15…. The safety of the artists, that’s our first concern.”
“Artist safety should be the number one consideration,” Weisman agrees. “Demanding we move during this deadly pandemic is just unconscionable!” Working in collage, assemblage, and mixed media, Weisman stores a “wide variety of materials” in her studio. “The idea of endangering my life to spend many hours a week packing up all this material is frightening,” she said. “And the logistics and expense of moving is equally unnerving.” Without a car or a driver’s license, Weisman will have to hire movers which might increase her risk of being exposed to the virus.
“Because this is happening in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, it's hard to figure out a good, long-term plan,” said Katarina Jerinic, who was among the original group of artists who moved into the Spaceworks Gowanus facility when it opened in 2016. “I don't feel comfortable, or like it's even possible, to go look at new studios and I would like to move somewhere that it at least seems possible to stay long term, rather than snatching something up in a desperate scramble.”
Ideally the artists would like to stay at 540 President Street and they hope at the very least PDS will extend the move-out date until the stay-at-home order is lifted and “not require anyone to move until it’s 100% safe to do so,” Thornton said.
“I am determined to stay local to Gowanus/Park Slope
since I am part of this artist community.”
Since Arts Gowanus sent out a press release on April 16 to announce the dilemma and request assistance, Thornton has received nearly 100 messages from supporters “sharing the outrage and sending love the artists’ way.” He is especially grateful to ArtBuilt in Sunset Park who has offered assistance and space to the impacted artists. “Unfortunately for a lot of our artists, they’re local and they work late, and they’re not really able to take space in Sunset Park. What we’re really looking for is space in Gowanus, or Gowanus adjacent. Space that’s close,” he explained. As Weisman begins to explore “the few options that are available and affordable” she insists “I am determined to stay local to Gowanus/Park Slope since I am part of this artist community.”
Weisman is no stranger to being abruptly uprooted. In 2018, she and nearly 30 other artists at Madarts Studios on 18th Street in South Slope were issued a Vacate Notice from the NYC Department of Buildings. A DOB inspector told the artists that the building was “deemed unsafe” and gave them 48 hours to vacate. While the “48-hour edict did get extended to 14 days,” the artists still had to scramble to relocate and never received their security deposits back. Weisman recalls that her application for a subsidized studio at Spaceworks was approved soon after this upheaval and she unwittingly thought that she had found “a much more secure situation.”
In 2016, at another nearby location, dozens of artists were evicted from a multi-building studio complex spanning 9th and 10th Streets to make way for a new mixed-use development.
“Unfortunately the rates in Gowanus are just
not very reasonable anymore.”
With so many New Yorkers financially impacted by COVID-19, Arts Gowanus is calling on landlords to offer the displaced artists affordable studio space. Thornton notes that several of the Spaceworks artists had subsidized rent, slightly below the neighborhood’s market rate. “Since no one is looking for studios right now except for us…we’re hoping some collective bargaining [can be done]” with the artists, he said. “I’m hoping that some Gowanus studio building or landlord will recognize the value that these artists bring to the community and keep them here.”
“Unfortunately the rates in Gowanus are just not very reasonable anymore,” Jerinic notes. “Since Spaceworks' mission was to provide artists with affordable, sustainable, long-term work space, it's incredibly disappointing that they are closing their doors, whether this happened during the pandemic or not…. It's just another chapter in the discouraging, ongoing conversation about how New York City has become unaffordable for artists.”
Johnny Thornton's studio at Spaceworks during 2019 Gowanus Open Studios (Photo: Nathan Haselby)
Thornton hopes this story will “alert the community that we need real estate partners. We need help keeping our community vibrant with affordable artist spaces in Gowanus.” The city’s planned rezoning of Gowanus will offer developers incentives to build mixed-use projects that include workspace for artists as well as cultural space, but affordable opportunities are needed now to retain the artists who have helped establish the neighborhood’s creative energy. Spaceworks is located within the district of NYC Council Member Brad Lander who has been working on the Gowanus rezoning for years. Lander’s office did not respond to a request for comment prior to posting.
“Once artists make a neighborhood a vibrant and desirable place,
it’s at that point that we’re kicked out.”
“It’s yet another example of artists creating a burgeoning local arts community that makes neighborhoods interesting, vibrant, and desirable—which adds value to real estate,” Weisman notes. “Inevitably those landlords begin raising our art studio rents unmercifully, or the buildings that housed the art studio spaces get sold and developed, and the artists ultimately lose in the end and get booted out with no place to go.”
“Most artists (and small businesses) don't make much money from their work, but add so much value to the city's neighborhoods, so much so that they can't afford to remain there anymore,” Jerinic adds. “I was so optimistic and pleased to have a studio at Spaceworks, because, although my studio rent wasn't a huge bargain, it was an affordable, high-quality space in an active and supportive community.”
Thornton shares this frustration. “Once artists make a neighborhood a vibrant and desirable place, it’s at that point that we’re kicked out,” he said. “I don’t accept that.”
Once some normalcy returns to NYC, Jerinic hopes the city will do more to create affordable workspace. “In the long term, it would be ideal to really look at why it seems so difficult for organizations dedicated to keeping the city affordable to remain viable and to really address that—for artists, and for a lot of other residents of this city too,” she said.
“I would like the community at large, especially property owners and real estate developers, to really consider what makes Gowanus such a vibrant community. It’s the artists,” Thornton insists. “And we need help and we need affordable spaces.”
Thank you for reporting this. Has anyone looked into where all of the money that Spaceworks received from the City, foundations and other donations has gone? They received millions of dollars for projects on Governors Island and elsewhere that were never completed. In mid 2019 they fired half if their staff and their director quit. Why did Spaceworks fail?
Posted by: Marie | 06/05/2020 at 06:40 PM
Sad story, but very well reported, thorough, and an easy read. Hope some evil but open-minded landlord develops a heart, like the Grinch, and writes a happy ending to this tale.
Posted by: Timothy McDarrah | 04/20/2020 at 04:43 PM
Thank you so much for writing about this! Do you think there's any way that the new Gowanus space Powerhouse could step in and help? https://www.powerhousearts.org/
In what I initially read, they were interested in responding to local artists' needs. That led to a focus on fabrication, it seems, but perhaps there is some way they could respond to this current crisis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/arts/design/the-batcave-a-graffiti-landmark-in-brooklyn-grows-up.html
Posted by: Rebecca | 04/20/2020 at 03:56 PM