For the past 20-plus years, Artspace has been at the forefront of the creation of long-term, affordable space for individual artists, their families, arts organizations, and creative businesses. As such, we think it's important to note the following:
1. Multi-tenant, multi-use creative spaces generate positive economic revitalization and development. Each project provides job opportunities both before and after construction. Each artist is, in effect, his/her own cottage industry, an entrepreneur contributing to the job market and helping to employ others along the way.
2. Artspace's projects create permanent, community arts space that provides resident artists with opportunities to interact with the public and creates opportunities for the larger arts community to showcase members' work.
3. Creating permanently affordable live/work space helps to build an authentic community of local artists who collaborate with each other as well as with other local, national, and international artists.
4. Artspace's projects are catalysts for streetscape improvements and general beautification around our buildings.
5. Artists are known to be pioneers and as such are willing to move into older industrial areas of a city, creating "buffer zones" between these areas and the residential areas nearby.
6. Creating live/work space also helps to preserve cultural and historic heritage, a key component of any potential St. Anthony Park project.
7. Artspace artists are known for collaborating with the larger educational and cultural/business communities, often as teachers, adjunct professors. and/or volunteers for youth and cultural organizations.
8. Artspace sometimes partners with for-profit developers that may have incentives or quotas to meet in the affordable housing realm. Affordable housing for artists can be seen as an amenity to those doing market-rate housing and other developments.