Lowertown St. Paul's artists concerned about neighborhood changes

Source: Pioneer Press, St.儲存 Paul, Minn.Oct. 04--With the St. Paul Art Crawl landing in Lowertown this weekend, mixed-media artist Chad Hambright is optimistic about the future of the neighborhood where he's worked and lived for seven years.But he has a few caveats for City Hall.Among Hambright's concerns: Will the upcoming improvements to Prince Street be artist-friendly? Will the regional ballpark have enough local art? And if it weren't for the occasional art crawl, would any out-of-towner know that Lowertown is an arts hub?"There's not so many visual clues on the ground that it's an artists' community," said Hambright, a resident of the Northern Warehouse artist cooperative who is keenly aware that four years of continuous construction is altering the landscape he paints.Sculptor Frank J. Brown, on the other hand, said he's thinking of leaving Lowertown altogether after 16 years."It's just so disappointing to see the lack of support for St. Paul artists," Brown said. "I've seen my friends move over to Minneapolis, because they seem to feel that the only way to get their work shown in St. Paul is to live in Minneapolis."With mixed emotions, the arts community formed in the once-sleepy warehouse district has been caught in a wave of growth and change. To their benefit, the renovated Union Depot transit hub on Kellogg Boulevard and the conversion of old office buildings into higher-end housing have created new spaces to display local talent. Among them, the Minnesota Museum of American Art recently opened in the lower level of the Pioneer-Endicott buildings, not far from where the Bedlam Theater now sits on Fourth Street.At the same time, the quickening pace of development has raised fears that gentrification will increase the cost of living or doing business beyond what many artists can afford. The writers, performers and visual artists who made Lowertown livable hope there will continue to be a place for them as retirees and middle-to-upper income renters move in next door.Over the next year or so, at least 1,000 new residents are expected to move into market-rate apartments in the Pioneer-Endicott buildings, the Lofts at Farmers Market, the Penfield, the Rayette Building and the West Side Flats. The old Kellogg Boulevard post office tower is also expected to be redeveloped soon, and several existing apartment buildings are being renovated.Meanwhile, construction of the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit line, or Green Line, appears to be drawing interest from restaurants and retailers, a blessing or a curse for artists accustomed to living among quiet warehouse spaces available for low rent. A new regional ballpark for the St. Paul Saints and amateur teams is expected to draw up to 7,000 visitors on a regular basis to a site that once drew none."I think the ballpark is a good addition to the community here," said Hambright. "Ever since I moved into the Northern Warehouse, people have been saying, 'How do we get more people to come?' All of a sudden, it's, 'Oh no, people!'"BALLPARK ARTNevertheless, even Hambright has his criticisms of the ballpark. A 10-member selection committee announced in late September that they had combed through submissions from 133 artists from 30 states, Puerto Rico, Canada and Italy. They chose three finalists from Tucson, Ariz., Claremont, Calif. and the Twin Cities.The winner, to be announced this month, will receive a $170,000 contract to work with the ballpark design team and a Lowertown committee to develop design schemes for a public art installation.The final product, according to city officials, will still be informed by general public input and online polling.Brad Meyer, a spokesman for St. Paul Parks and Recreation, said the $63 million ballpark project is receiving more than $25 million in state funding, which comes with the requirement that the call for artists gmini storage out statewide."We took it one step further and expanded it to a national and international level," Meyer said. "Showcasing local art would have been great, but we also wanted to make sure it was the best possible art and the best possible team for the project."Nevertheless, given the local flavor of the Saints minor league baseball franchise and the team's repeated promises not to water down its homegrown style, some artists were taken aback that the selection process was also opened to out-of-staters."Weren't they talking about how they wanted the art to reflect Lowertown?" said Hambright, who had proposed a glass sculpture piece for the competition. "What's someone from Texas going to know about Lowertown?"Laura Aldrich, an essayist who lives downtown, was equally offput. "Every single person on that list should have been a local artist," Aldrich said.Lowertown painter Ta-coumba Aiken, who has entered juried art competitions for the better part of 30 years, took the national selection process in stride."It's a matter of whose stuff was the topnotch stuff," he said. "You don't just give something to somebody. Competitions are vicious out there, especially public art."The Saints have promised to find other ways to incorporate local artists into the ballpark, such as rotating exhibits or vending space.HOUSING FOR ARTISTSBrown, the sculptor, said he can name 46 artists who have moved out of Lowertown in recent years, which he sees as evidence of unhappiness. Aiken sees it differently: with home prices low, many of those artists purchased their first houses.If artists are worried they'll lose their downtown studios at the Northern Warehouse and the Tilsner Artist Cooperative on Broadway, they needn't be, said Wendy Holmes.Holmes is a vice president with the nonprofit Artspace, which converted both buildings into artist housing in the early 1990s. She said the Northern Warehouse was refinanced in 2011 with low-income housing tax credits, ensuring it remains affordable to artists for another 30 years. Similar financial guarantees mandate that the Tilsner building remains affordable for years to come.More opportunities are cropping up. Holmes noted that some 600 new apartments targeted to artists are about to open up in the Twin Cities, including 247 units at the Schmidt Brewery on St. Paul's West Seventh Street.PRINCE STREETGlassworker Aaron Tafoya, who moved into Lowertown's Northern Warehouse about 1 1/2 years ago, sees the Lowertown streetscape about to change, and he's hoping artists will be included in the process.The 6th street sidewalk along Mears Park between Sibley and Wacouta will be expanded this fall to create more of a promenade with outdoor seating. Prince Street, which sits between the Central Corridor maintenance facility and the Northern Warehouse building, will undergo a $3 million transformation beginning this month, as well.As those plans were unfolding, Hambright said that a representative of the Northern Warehouse cooperative met with the city to emphasize that artists need to be able to load and unload large works at street level."We worked with the Northern Warehouse, and the businesses, and there's actually a drop-off zone created so people can stop and drop off their art or groceries and proceed to the parking after that," said city engineer John Maczko.That's a start, but Tafoya said he would ultimately like to see more of a plaza along Prince Street where artists can display their wares during the popular weekend farmers market sales, as well as more natural elements, such as birch trees and a creek-like path, guided by artists.Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) Visit the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) at .twincities.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage