No one is looking to build a baseball field out of a cornfield, but Arlington County is hoping that if they build it, they will come. The “it” in this case is affordable artist housing, the “they”—inherently—would be the artists. That’s what is largely behind the work of Arlington and the nonprofit Artspace that works with communities to create affordable places for artists to live and work.
The conversation of establishing affordable housing for area artists began in earnest in 2016, when representatives from the Pappas Trust got in touch with Arlington’s Public Arts Director Angela Adams about developing an art project on 23rd Street in Crystal City. When word of this got to Michelle Isabelle-Stark, the cultural affairs division chief for the county, she remembered her previous experience working with Artspace on a project on Long Island, New York. “The village now is so lively,” says Isabelle-Stark, and she saw similarities between that project and Arlington.
The Arlington Foundation for Arts and Innovation is leading the project, with funding support from the Pappas Trust and help with community engagement coming from Arlington and Isabelle-Stark’s office. Artspace, meanwhile, has been providing its services to help determine the community interest and feasibility of such a project.
To do so, Artspace came down to Arlington in February 2017 to inspect four potential sites and hold focus groups with community members. The four sites were Crystal City, Virginia Square, Columbia Pike and Four Mile Run. Any future project is not limited to those four sites, but those were the sites the county identified to Artspace to determine if Arlington was capable of such a project. After the two-day visit, Artspace took the information gathered to write out a full report on whether or not they should move forward.
“Arlington was a place we were pretty excited to come back [to] and tell them, ‘We think there is something more here that we’d like to study and really get at the heart of these sectors,’” says Stacey Mickelson, vice president of advancement and government relations with Artspace. The next step was a survey that was opened to anyone within 50 miles of Arlington and that closed in mid-May.
“The numbers prove out what our hunch was,” says Mickelson, “and that is at least one space, one artist live/work space, could be supported and probably an artist’s working studio building with no residential that would just be a place for artists to work.”
Some of the specific findings indicated that if such affordable housing was available a number of people would consider moving into Arlington. Isabelle-Stark believes that many of these responses came from people who live in surrounding areas of Arlington and may work in Arlington, but can’t afford to live there at the moment. This is slightly unusual, according to Mickelson. Typically, the people who are most interested in these types of spaces already live in the area that is being looked at. “This is people that we touched in our survey who don’t live in Arlington who are excited about Arlington and are excited about the opportunity to live and work in Arlington,” Mickelson details.
Another unique result from the survey was the response to theater. Many of the respondents were interested in how these spaces could be used by those in the performing arts, more than visual arts, which Mickelson says is usually the art form that draws the most interest.
The survey did its job and showed that artists in the area would be intrigued by the opportunity, but before they can pack up their paints and easels there are still a number of details that need to be worked out. Notably, an official location must be selected. In addition to the four sites that were originally considered, it is expected that other sites will throw their name into the ring now that things are progressing.
Artspace says that it expects to send another batch of representatives to Arlington in late summer or fall to begin what it calls its “quiet phase,” six to eight months of research to determine the best possible location based on factors like available land, funding opportunities, parking, Metro and other services.
If—though there is high interest from all parties, nothing is set in stone—and when Artspace chooses to set up shop somewhere in Arlington, it’s set to be a figure in Arlington’s art community for years to come. Mickelson says these spaces sign agreements that will keep them providing affordable housing for 50-plus years.
Artspace has more than 50 such developments across the country, including two in the area in Brooklands in the District and Mount Rainer, Maryland, with a third coming to Silver Spring, Maryland. A fourth could make the Metro-D.C. area the new hotbed for artists in the Mid-Atlantic.
