A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN.

When San Francisco Camerawork signed a five-year commercial lease in 1995, rent was an affordable $30,000 for the entire year. The gallery showcased contemporary photography next to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, just south of downtown in the primarily light-industrial "South of Market" (SoMa) area. The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 had devastated the district, built mostly over unstable landfill and "at the time, there was a chance that some buildings might be abandoned if landlords couldn't raise money for the necessary retrofitting," said Marnie Gillett, San Francisco Camerawork's executive director. [1] The recession of the early '90s left San Francisco with a stagnant economy and a glut of vacant commercial square footage; two companies alone dumped 1.2 million square feet back on the market at the close of 1995. Arts organizations and businesses had taken advantage of relatively low rents in SoMa: Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams Center was located nearby, as well as RayKo, the rental lab wh ere San Francisco Camerawork ran their youth program.

Five years later, the commercial rents in San Francisco have skyrocketed, surpassing even midtown Manhattan. In an Internet gold rush characterized by venture capital deals and a scarcity of computer programmers, California companies have abandoned the sprawling suburban office park for hipper, more urban locales. Companies are willing to pay a premium for the cachet of a SoMa address--dotcoms from eGreetings to Petopia have planted headquarters in the neighborhood. After investing five years and completing a full renovation of the space, SF Camerawork was notified that the rent would quadruple to $120,000 per year.

The Mayors Office of Community Development reports that non-profit organizations pay from $3.12-$46.44 per square foot, per year. Within the first six months of this year, the median office rent in San Francisco rose nearly 20% to over $77 per square foot per year. With rent control illegal for commercial and office spaces, non-residential landlords are free to raise rents to market value or above. Half of San Francisco's non-profit leases expire at the end of this calendar year. Even the pro-growth San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association warned, "By out-competing other firms [in the rental market], the information technology industry actually threatens the diversity of the local economy." Dot-coms are circumventing San Francisco's restrictions on development in residential and industrial neighborhoods by classifying themselves as "business services" instead of office space. Even as start-ups eager for a San Francisco location urge non-profits to react to rising rents by quietly moving to the E ast Bay, performance and gallery spaces are already closing in response to real estate pressures in already gentrifying Oakland.

Residential rents are keeping pace in San Francisco: a one bedroom apartment in the city now rents for an average of just under $2000 per month. With no certification process in place, like in New York City, to ensure residents are working artists who need studio space, live-work lofts have been appropriated by the "New Economy" as well. This summer the San Jose Mercury News ran a front page feature on lofts titled "Homes for the Hip," beginning, "No longer just havens for the artsy, trendy dwellings are catching on..." [2]

Every sector of the arts community has been affected, from individual artists to arts-related small businesses. Indeed, the runaway commercial and residential real estate market is effectively destroying the habitat necessary for a healthy arts community. In particular, extinction looms within the dance community, which requires larger spaces. In the last year 12 dance organizations have been evicted or priced out of their studios, even while the Convention and Visitor's Bureau Web site blithely insists that "Especially in the field of dance, San Francisco is second only to New York." [3]

Space-sharing arrangements have become a solution for several displaced arts non-profits. In December, SF Camerawork will move into the space currently occupied solely by New Langton Arts, an organization with a similar mission and history. Says Gillett, "The Board of Directors [of New Langton Arts] was very gracious in taking us in. Otherwise we would have had nowhere to go." The two organizations will alternate exhibitions in the shared gallery.

Sixth Street Photography Workshop, which provides programs for low income adults, many of whom live in nearby residential hotels, will move to the city-owned South of Market Cultural Center. The owner of the building in the mid-Market area, which resembles pre-Disney Times Square, decided not to renew the non-profit's lease. Tom Ferentz, director of Sixth Street, lamented, "This work requires building an artistic community which means building a presence in the community and building trust. One cannot simply pack up and leave while this is going on." [4] Many start-ups argue that proximity to the technology epicenter is essential for conducting their business and for making the person-to-person connections necessary for securing capital and human resources. Some are even pleading for government assistance with the high cost of living. [5] Yet the ramifications of the dispersal of artists and arts organizations are largely ignored.

The South of Market Cultural Center has also invited the nation's oldest Asian American arts organization, Kearny Street Workshop, to squeeze their office into the silkscreen facilities; there is no room to take in any more organizations after that. Langton, Sixth, Kearny: the list of organizations named for streets they no longer occupy is a testament to the fact that space has always been at a premium, now more than ever.

Small businesses are suffering from sticker shock as well. The two rental darkrooms with color facilities in San Francisco, RayKo and ColorArts Lab, have closed in the last year. ColorArts owner Laura Miller says she is "trying hard to remain in the city" but that she knows of "many emerging photographers who have been forced over the [Bay] Bridge [to Oakland]":

I predict that Oakland will become the Bay Area arts center within the next 10 years or so. The unique smaller independent and alternative spaces will disappear altogether. There is no photo district any more already as the community is now scattered. [6]

At 49 Geary, the main downtown gallery building where many commercial galleries relocated after the 1989 earthquake, the sole topic of conversation is the projected rent increases--predicted to be triple for upcoming renewals. Connie Wirtz of Stephen Wirtz commented, "The problem with that is that we show young Bay Area artists and there's a limit to what we can charge. You'd have to be showing Picassos to make that kind of rent." [7]

There have been individual reprieves. The currently gallery-less Friends of Photography/Ansel Adams Center is only waiting for renovations to be completed on their larger and more central location in SoMa--perhaps the last photography institution left in what used to be the photo district. Deborah Klochko, executive director of Friends of Photography, said that the fortuitously timed move was prompted by the end of their lease in 1999 and the need to generate more earned income in an era where more arts organizations are pursuing fewer overall dollars. "Moving takes a tremendous amount of time and energy away from programming," she acknowledged, "but we are very lucky to have signed a 10-year lease just before the real estate market really exploded." [8] Friends of Photography has also had to respond to the higher salaries easily available in dotcoms: Klochko noted that her organization has changed compensation levels to be competitive in the current tight labor market.

Rent tripled for the Michael Shapiro Gallery after moving from its home of 12 years late last year. Nevertheless, Michael Shapiro calls himself "the luckiest dealer on earth" and notes that if he had hesitated even two weeks in the search he would have paid twice as much for a smaller and less ideal space. "I've heard rumors that some galleries are thinking of going to the East Bay and buying a building," said Shapiro. "I'm lucky in that business is good, I have space and many loyal clients interested in classic photography but I'll have to start looking for spaces again in five or six years." [9]

The arts organizations not facing astronomical rent increases generally either have a strong rapport with an "old-school" San Francisco landlord or have bought their building. The Luggage Store Gallery purchased their building in partnership with three other investors after the death of the primary owner in May 1999. Co-director Darryl Smith notes, "We had always focused on finding low or no cost space. In our 13 years we had never considered buying a building." [10] But as the surviving partner intended to put all the properties on the market immediately, the long application process endemic to typical non-profit funding sources such as city governments or foundations precluded the gallery from pursuing the traditional funders, many of whom expressed interest and sympathy. Due to the Luggage Store's close relationship with the previous landlord, and the current owner's appreciation for the gallery's work, she never listed the property (thus affording the organization an extra couple of months to raise the c apital) and accepted a slightly below market offer.

One remaining arts bastion in the city, the large artists' community in Hunters Point Shipyard, forged strong links with local small businesses to successfully thwart an eviction threat from the former naval property in the mid 1980s. Now, despite only one land parcel being fully decontaminated while others harbor carcinogens and radioactive materials left from years of heavy industrial usage, the Shipyard is listed on one marketing Web site as such: "With 493 developable acres in land-scarce San Francisco, Hunters Point Shipyaro offers a rare opportunity for growing businesses seeking waterfront property." [11] The surrounding community of Hunters Point/Bay View remains affordable, but more artists are rejecting the role they are playing in what Miller sees as "the inevitable gentrification." Said led Speare, director of Mobius in Boston, "You know what the cycle is--artists come to an area, make it attractive and then get pushed out." [12]

The space crisis is by no means limited to the Silicon Valley orbit. Arts communities in other cities also recount a litany of displacements caused by runaway office development and a lack of city support. In Los Angeles, the companies competing for space include digital studios and postproduction houses, as well as dot-coms--but the impact is the same. In May of this year, Santa Monica had 156 live-work studios. Two months later, in July, only 78 were left. Karen Atkinson, founder and executive director of Side Street Projects in Los Angeles, reports that the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, evicted from its Hollywood space, has moved in with Side Street. Six other organizations who need offices are also partnering with Side Street Projects. [13]

On the east coast, Massachusetts has turned from a traditional base of manufacturing into what some analysts have anointed as the high-tech haven. In Boston proper several traditionally working class districts are experiencing the bulk of real estate pressures; over 150 artists are being evicted from the Jamaica Plain neighborhood alone. Boston's southern waterfront is one of the last places in the city where space is available, and home to the 25-year-old artists' community at Fort Point that created a vibrant neighborhood out of obsolete warehouses. Speare said that there has been "a huge migration in the last five years" of architects, dot-com companies and others, all looking for office space in the century-old buildings at Fort Point. The Fort Point Cultural Coalition (FPCC), an alliance of five organizations including an advocacy group that represents hundreds of artists with live-work spaces, was formed after it became clear that the owners were unlikely to renew their leases. The current five-year bl ock lease took two years to negotiate and was signed several months overdue. The coalition is spearheading a two-pronged effort to bring the imminent space crisis to the forefront of public and civic attention and to enter into negotiations to purchase property. During October Open Studios, San Francisco artist-activist Joan Holden and the San Francisco Mime Troupe were in Boston to help make connections to the national crisis. The Mime Troupe performed their original 1999 play City For Sale, a dramatization of the changes occurring in San Francisco. Speare reinforced the importance of FPCC's concurrent visibility campaign to highlight the contributions of artists and arts organizations to Boston; through programs such as their May Day postcard series in Fort Point and the upcoming Public Art Series, the coalition signals the irreplaceable public value of the arts.

With one coalition organization's lease expiring in 2001, but the majority of studios secure until 2003, Speare said, "We're hoping that we've approached this at the right time, that we're not too late." Most of Fort Point is owned by a single company, which helps to centralize efforts to engage the city, the landowner and the state simultaneously. Fort Point already has two artist-owned complexes and the city of Boston recommends mixed use for the neighborhood. Speare explained, "We want them to understand that the existence of an artists' community is compatible with development." A building committee continues to regularly meet to search for viable, usable buildings but there is currently no way to purchase property at market rate. While the FPCC had been in serious discussion with the owners about a particular 500,000 square foot property, the piece was sold, without notice, to another developer. Still, Speare remains guardedly optimistic since, so far, FPCC "has been successful in engaging city official s, getting them to meetings and getting their ear."

"Here's a piece of old news," said this year's guide to the 25th Annual San Francisco Open Studios. [14] Artists, cultural spaces and arts organizations are all getting displaced. Yet while this has been worsening over the last three years, public attention has only been brought to bear on the issue of displacement over the last 12 months. Now, study after study has corroborated that "Yes, there is a crisis," and recommendations for solutions are flying. A column in the San Francisco Chronicle about turning the somewhat seedy MidMarket corridor into an arts district has generated a lot of favorable discussion, with some nay-sayers pointing out that some of the buildings in question are sinking. [15] Chris Mohr, of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, commented that the Citizens Advisory Committee for the city's Mid-Market Redevelopment Survey Area strongly encourages cultivation of arts organizations. "However," said Mohr, "the area has yet to be designated a full-blown redevelopment area, so the city's powers are limited. As it is, dozens of non-profits have been or are about to be evicted, because landlords can make a lot more money renting to dot-coms." [16] The San Francisco Arts Commission, in conjunction with Grants for the Arts, raised $75,000 for a study to "come up with a unified strategy." The study's release on October 3 generated a mayoral proposal to allocate 1.5 million dollars for threatened arts organizations--a sum many artists decry as insufficient--but no timeline for implementation. So what now?

Some are not-so-secretly hoping for the recent downward turn in technology stocks to precipitate a full-fledged dot-com collapse. But the recent redevelopment in the cheap urban neighborhoods abandoned during the "white flight" of the the '70s and '80s is unlikely to reverse. The return of corporations and the middle class to urban cores was noted as early as August 1996. San Francisco real estate brokers saw new tenants in the central business district drawn by the easily accessible "recreation, entertainment and arts" (emphasis added). [17] The New York Times Magazine piece, "Austin, We Have a Problem" focused on how the live music mecca is grappling with what one new millionaire diagnosed as an "extreme rate of growth [that] threatens to wipe out the very qualities that attracted people in the first place." [18] So in a climate where bourgeois bohemian is a native species, and Silicon Valley companies send carloads of employees to the annual Burning Man arts bacchanalia in the Nevada desert to return reju venated and primed to integrate creativity into the everyday, how can we save the arts?

While National Endowment for the Arts funding has finally been increased this year, the United States continues to lag in its government support for the arts--$6 per person compared to $60 per person in Sweden, for example. But NEA funding serves as a valuable stamp of approval that triggers scarce facilities funds from foundations like Kresge. The State of California has been raking in taxes from the business boom, but only just boosted its arts spending to a meager 92 cents per capita. Even the growth in foundation giving has yet to translate into a corollary in contributions to the arts, which trails the overall growth in foundation endowments. The opportunity for increased arts support exists. The question is, can evicted artists and organizations survive long enough in this inhospitable and shrinking habitat to reap the as of yet unseen money?

Many have suggested that a liason with Internet money may be the best way to save the arts in San Francisco. Being a dot-com employee or a high tech CEO does not preclude an appreciation for the arts. Indeed, Internet start-ups are ideologically more aligned with alternative gallery spaces than the local opera house. However, the much touted venture funding Web site for artists, Idealive.com, has to date successfully secured funding for only one film. Another example trotted out in local media as proof that dot-commers and artists can get along was the fundraiser in August for the film Think Doomed-cannily billed as the first in a series of parties "to help save the S.F. arts scene." More timely, a fundraiser for the evicted dance company, Joe Goode Performance Group, has been scheduled at Foreign Cinema, the French bistro and favorite Internet money haunt located at ground zero in the Mission District.

Others continue to look to the city to intervene, suggesting that San Francisco put some of the tax surplus into a fund to buy buildings for displaced non-profits. The mayor's recently announced proposal does include plans for 150,000 square feet of non-profit space, located at Pier 70 on the edge of the city and far from most organizations' current headquarters. Consolidating the majority of organizations into a few city-owned properties may create space for fruitful collaboration. Eddie Wong of the National Asian American Telecommunications Association said that the shared Media Arts building allowed the resident film nonprofits to share resources, equipment and "mental and spiritual support." [19] But others shy away from the prospect of arts malls that pluck organizations and artists from the community they work in and in effect ghettoize them into tourist attractions to visit, unintegrated into daily life. With the real estate market projected to remain at fever pitch, there is also the fear that there are not even any buildings available to buy.

Nevertheless, if San Francisco can afford giant subsidies for the sports stadium essential to a "world class city," a strong argument exists to provide similar subsidies in order to maintain a thriving and diverse arts scene (i.e., not just a ballet, an opera and a symphony). Jack Davis of the South of Market Cultural Center sees the real estate crisis as a "500 lb gorilla everyone is organizing around but it's not the only problem. Solutions can't come in this environment that marginalizes the value of arts and community." [20]

Thus, perhaps the most promising effect of this crisis is the success of displaced artists and non-profits in putting arts back on the public agenda. This summer, volunteers collected over 30,000 signatures in under a month in favor of putting a slow growth initiative on November's ballot that would, among other reforms, close the loophole that allows dot-coms to avoid office development restrictions and require that 10% of new commercial office space be set aside and subsidized for non-profits of all kinds. Coverage in the local papers is nearly daily, from opinion pieces on evicted musicians to straight news stories on protests at City Hall. Yes, cities change. Industries fail, factories close and entire populations shift around--some out to the suburbs, some in from different states and different countries. An option that many artists and organizations have elected to exercise is to vote their disgust with their feet--fleeing across the Bay or down the coast to L.A. to ecosystems friendlier to the arts. T hose who are staying, however, fear that the most visible remainders of the fabled San Francisco creativity will be the dyed hair on dot-com workers flooding the lunchtime streets. What developers and proponents of the current runaway growth fail to mention is that change can be directed and molded. On October 30, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors approved a $1.5 million emergency fund earmarked for rental assistance to arts organizations struggling to keep performance and rehearsal spaces. Non-profits eligible for the one-year rent subsidy program must have had a rent increase of at least 100%. Other related current City Hall proposals include tax incentives to landlords renting to non-profits, temporary zoning restrictions on mid-Market Street and the limited adaptation of underused city properties. Artists and arts supporters will have the opportunity at the ballot box on November 7 to signal their committment to preserve and sustain arts in San Francisco and to shape the direction of development yet to come.

ANNETTE KOH is a freelance writer and nonprofit worker living in San Francisco's South of Market district.

[Ed. note: A new Web site, run out of San Francisco, offers assistance to organizations seeking information on funding, space availability and sharing opportunities: www.Org-Spaces.org. The National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO) is also on top of this situation and asks members to share information with the association at [e-mail]. To inquire about membership in NAAO, send an email to the same address.]

NOTES

(1.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, August 30, 2000.

(2.) Sue McAllister, "Homes for the Hip," in San Jose Mercury News (July 28, 2000), p. 1.

(3.) See http://www.sfvisitor.org/travelmedia/html/whats_new5.html

(4.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 11, 2000.

(5.) Jennifer Bjorhus, "Government urged to Help Tech," in San Jose Mercury News (October 12, 2000), p. 1C.

(6.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 20, 2000.

(7.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 28, 2000.

(8.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, August 30, 2000.

(9.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 14, 2000.

(10.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 21, 2000.

(11.) See www.bayareafirst.org/prof/huntrspt.cfm.

(12.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 14, 2000.

(13.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 18, 2000.

(14.) Megan Wilson, "25 Years Get Hooked On Art: A Free Guide to SF Open Studios" (San Francisco: ArtSpan, 2000).

(15.) Bill Schwartz, "San Francisco, An Arts-Free Zone?," in San Francisco Chronicle (September 11, 2000), p. A19.

(16.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, October 2, 2000.

(17.) Tim Haskett, "San Francisco Leasing Volume Takes Off; City Already 90% Ahead of 1995 Activity," in Commercial Property News, August 1996.

(18.) Helen Thorpe, "Austin, We Have A Problem," in New York Times Magazine (August 20, 2000), p.43.

(19.) All quotes from a conversation with the author, September 29, 2000.

(20.) Ibid.