Technically only a half block away from the C-1 Zone (part of the definition of the downtown as per the City Zoning Code), what was once “the old middle school” is only a block away from the Carnegie Library and only two blocks away from the “heart” of Northfield…Bridge Square.  The NDDC is going to reach out across that short distance and say “Welcome, we’re glad you’re here.”.

The NDDC believes that the Weitz will be a great addition to Downtown Northfield.   In fact, the NDDC is so excited about the opening, we thought somebody should throw a party.  Fortunately, somebody is…

Carleton College cordially invites everyone to a special community open house celebrating the completion of the new Weitz Center for Creativity on Saturday, September 17, from 3 to 6 p.m. The celebration will feature tours of the building and its many unique spaces, as well as light refreshments and musical entertainment.

The event will also feature a presentation at 4 p.m. by professor John Schott about his photo exhibit “Middle School,” which documents the condition of the vacant former Northfield Middle School as it awaited renovation. The photos were taken in the winter of 2009, when the building had been empty and unused for five years.

At 5 p.m., Carleton President Steve Poskanzer will speak to welcome those in attendance, followed by an “official” welcome to Downtown Northfield by Greg Kneser, President of the Northfield Downtown Development Corporation (NDDC).

The Weitz Center for Creativity is located at 320 North Third Street in Northfield. For more information on this event, contact the Office of College Relations at (507) 222-4308. To take a virtual tour of the Weitz Center for Creativity at Carleton College, visit http://apps.carleton.edu/weitz

Four or five years ago, a group of people gathered together in pursuit of a shared goal: to make Northfield into an Art Town. Some months later, they realized that at least two other organizations, the Northfield Arts Guild (NAG) and the NDDC, shared some of the same goals. The groups got together and have been meeting monthly for three years as the Arts, Recreation and Culture (ARC) Committee.

Three or four years ago, the Historic Middle School complex emerged as a possible site for a Community Arts Center. The vision included classrooms for young artists, live-work spaces for emerging artists, and studios for mid-career artists. For those working to have Northfield recognized as an Art Town, it was a project with great potential. For a variety of reasons, that vision wasn’t realized. (See previous blog posts on Historic Middle School.)

The ARC Committee determined to continue working towards the Art Town goal along alternate routes. They decided to refocus on programming. The group met and discussed existing activities, events and festivals as well as possible additions to the community’s portfolio of programming.

Recently some people have suggested that we should direct a substantial portion of the resources available to the arts community and use them for a marketing campaign that promotes Northfield as an Art Town. I think that if we’re going to spend money on a sales pitch, we should direct it at John Villani and invite him to be our guest in Northfield.

John’s the guy that wrote the book The 100 Best Art Towns in America. The 4th Edition was published this year.

The book looks at the best Large Art Towns, with populations from 30,000 to 100,000 and the Best Small Art Towns, with populations under 30,000. The criteria includes number of galleries, affordability (regionally relative?), natural beauty (for inspiration?), local support for the arts, availability of studio and rehearsal space, frequency and impact of arts festivals, cohesiveness of the local arts community (ouch…), diversity of creative statements (?), and the infrastructure of theaters, art schools, art museums and exhibition and performance venues.

Searching for quick tips for Northfield, I focused on the Top Ten Towns Under 30,000. A few of the towns have special attributes that made me question their applicability to our situation. Naples, Florida, Provincetown, Massachusetts and Aspen, Colorado all combine incredible locations with phenomenal household wealth. But what can we learn from Northampton, Massachusetts, Kerrville, Texas and Traverse City, Michigan?

Northampton is “a prime example of what small towns dream of when they envision re-energizing their downtowns” with galleries, ethnic restaurants, night clubs, independently owned clothing stores and locally owned bookstores. Northampton also offers “a supportive arts community and a well-developed arts infrastructure, with studio spaces priced within reach”. The five colleges in the Northamption area each have an Arts Museum with specialized programming and contribute to the local art scene. Music is an important part of the art scene’s vitality. There are several venues for a variety of music and entertainment, The Northampton Community Music Center is home to year-round music education and The Northampton Arts Council presents a calendar’s worth of dance, theatre, film and music. Finally, the community also hosts an Independent Film Festival and is home to The New Century Theatre, a resident professional stage company.

Kerrville is as widely known for its rodeo as it is for its art. It does, however, have three major art museums. The community has embraced its history and much of the visual arts at these facilities is painting and sculpture focused on western themes. The community also has an excellent reputation for its jewelry. The historic Arcadia Theater is home to The Western Movie Theater, which is dedicated to screening old cowboy movies. There are two facilities for the performing arts which offer year-round programming. Most intriguing to me is the Kerrville Folk Festival, two weeks surrounding Memorial Day that draw thousands of music lovers from around the country and the Kerrville Wine & Music Festival over Labor Day Weekend that has been a regional draw for over a dozen years.

Traverse City admittedly has some pretty nice beaches. The annual Cherry Festival is a nationally recognized “blow-out week of partying” and features big-name entertainers on an outdoor stage along the waterfront. The community also offers a free, weekly Jazz at Sunset concert series (which is being researched by our local newspaper’s publisher who happens to be a member of the ARC Committee). There are also weekend live-music shows and weekly poetry readings at Horizon Books all-year long which serve as gatherings for the region’s creative community. The nearby Interlochen Center for the Arts offers a year-round arts academy and a summer arts camp; its programs serve all levels of students throughout the region. The area boasts six different performance spaces and a dozen galleries. The thriving vineyard industry certainly doesn’t hurt the ambiance.

So what tips did I gather from these examples? First, Art Towns celebrate and promote all art forms. There is visual art in the galleries, classes, dance and theatre in the art centers and music everywhere. Second, they offer life-cycle art programming. There is education for developing artists, supportive infrastructure for emerging artists and professional opportunities for mid-career artists. Third, they service both residents and visitors. Although activity clearly increases during “the season”, the programming, education and community get-togethers continue all year long. Finally, the institutions, be they the colleges of Northampton, the foundations of Kerrville or the academy of Traverse City, are all connected to the communities. There appears to be a seamless sharing of performances and spaces between the valleys and the hills.

Fortified with this new knowledge, let’s get back to John Villani. We could start him at Bridge Square and, of course, take him to the Northfield Historical Society to get him quickly up to speed on the James Gang. We could then walk him down to the NAG to be impressed with the “diversity of creative statements” in the member show, continue down to ArtOrg so that he can see the high-school honors show and marvel at the arts education program in our public schools. Then to Chapati for a buffet of some of that ethnic food he apparently so enjoys. After lunch, we could visit the Carleton campus and see the Japanese Garden and then climb the hill to St. Olaf and take the sculpture tour. For dinner, how about Hogan Brothers for some local acoustic music with his hot hoagie. Then out to the new Middle School for a performance by the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra, swing into Art-On-Water for an opening, a night cap at the Contented Cow with the Nordic Jam and to the Archer House to be serenaded to sleep by the St. Olaf Choir …

…okay, we’d have to script this last event but you get the idea. We could put together a heck of an Art Town experience for Mr. Villani for the price of a plane ticket, a hotel room and a few meals. Maybe I Cantanti could sing a few tunes while he had coffee and a scone at Goodbye Blue Monday and a matinee at the Little Theater before heading off to the airport. For less than the price of a marketing campaign, we could be listed in the book.

But maybe it’s not about getting into the book and maybe it’s not about a big campaign in some glossy magazine. Maybe it’s about recognizing what you already have in place and celebrating it with anyone who will participate and promoting it to anyone who will listen. Maybe it’s about leveraging existing assets and investing in necessary assets. Maybe it’s about assembling and focusing resources so that the world can’t help but notice that Northfield is an Art Town. Maybe it’s about coming together and getting it done.

The Open House will be held at the New Middle School Media Center, 2200 Division Street South, from 5 pm to 7 pm.

The School Board expects to make a decision on June 13 about how to reuse the facility and wants to receive public input.

The School District had set up a Community Reuse Committee to evaluate successful reuse of the Historic Middle School. The Committee established five goals for the reuse:

– Significant Community Use
– Financial Feasiblity
– Downtown Support
– Historic Preservation
– Good Neighbor

The School District has since indicated that it is possible that the reuse project may not meet all five goals and that the selected proposal must best serve the needs of the School District and its taxpayers in “light of financial realities”.

The article in the Strib features a number of photographs of Artspace’s Washington Studios project in Duluth. I was the project manager at Artspace for that development and I thought that I might compare the financing for that project with the potential structuring for the Historic Middle School in Northfield as a basis for examining the feasibility of the potential project.

Much has been made of Artspace’s failure to be awarded the tax credits by the State of Minnesota in their first application last year. In this highly-competitive process, Artspace only missed being awarded credits by two or three points. I think that they got 80 points and they needed 83 to get credits.

In the Duluth project, Artspace was not awarded any credits in their first application, was awarded some credits in their second application and then was awarded additional credits in their third application. Artspace had advised the community before making the first application that it might be a similar experience for the Northfield project.

There has also been a number of references to Artspace’s inability to raise a million dollars in the community to support the project. Once again, a comparison to the project in Duluth is illuminating.

In addition to the almost $3 million of private equity and loans for the Washington Studios, Artspace secured over $1.5 million in subsidy money to keep the units affordable to low and moderate income households. Here is the structure of this financing:

TIF $419,324
Rental Rehab $285,000
HOME Funds $100,000
ISD Abatement $312,636
City Abatement $100,000
McKnight Foundation $265,000
Other Local Support $285,000

The Washington Studios has 39 units, Artspace was proposing 22 units for the Historic Middle School. Based on the Duluth structuring, the Northfield subsidy money might be structured along these lines:

TIF $236,542
Rental Rehab $160,769
HOME Funds $ 56,410
ISD Abatement $176,359
City Abatement $ 56,410
McKnight Foundation $149,487
Other Local Support $160,769

TOTAL of ABOVE: $996,747

I have heard that Artspace’s local fund-raising team had achieved $120,000 in commmitments, within striking distance of the $160,769 identified above as the Other Local Support. The above structuring does not include any money from the Community Investment Fund, $1.5 million available to support challenging community projects.

So, in answer to those that have asked me why Artspace couldn’t do it in Northfield, there’s no reason they couldn’t do it. In Duluth, the conversion of the Historic Middle School to an Arts Facility was a priority for the City, the EDA, the ISD, the Arts Community and for Artspace. The Arts Department at UMD was an early and energetic supporter. Different communities simply have different situations and therefore different priorities.

Wesleyan built a community arts center for Middletown called the Green Street Arts Center. Working with the local non-profit NEAT (the North End Action Team), Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts determined that the best way to achieve outreach to the community was to build the community an arts center.

The leadership on this initiative came from Wesleyan’s Vice President, Peter Patton. According to the article, Vice President Patton understood that “NEAT wanted a community center: a gathering place, a source of pride, and a central hub”.

Wesleyan determined that “the center had to be built with the same eye to quality and pride that Wesleyan would lavish on a central-campus building. A little storefront wouldn’t be a beacon for the commmunity”.

The college and community team found a perfect location for the project: “a hulking old brick building” that had once been the parochial school for St. Sebastian’s church. “With its generous rooms and tall windows, it was easy to imagine sunlight streaming in on classrooms filled once again with laughing children”.

“With much hard work, the funding began to fall into place through city, state and federal money, as well as a $500,000 gift from an anonymous alumnus” who directed the gift to the project at the urging of Wesleyan President Douglas Bennet.

Now that the building is open, Wesleyan continues its support of the Green Street Arts Center through programming.

The Kamau Jazz Trio performs at the Grand Opening of the Green Street Arts Center.

There were many mentions of Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class at the NDDC’s March Forum. I was familiar with the book but after the Forum, I thought I’d just head over to the Public Library and check out a copy.

As I flipped through the pages, I was dismayed with the great number of charts and graphs. So I skimmed through until I found something that looked interesting to me, Chapter 16, “Building the Creative Community”.

The chapter suggests that the key to building successful businesses, and through them, achieving economic development, is to attract good people. Therefore, in addition to having a good climate for business, in order to attract top creative talent, a community needs to offer what the book refers to as lifestyle options and amenities.

Some of these amenities are familiar to us all. Low crime rates and clean streets are “no-brainers”. Some of the powerful elements of “soft” infrastructure are less obvious, but are gaining wider currency. Pedestrian-friendly town centers and increased population in downtown are increasingly recognized as contributing to a community’s economic development. Northfield is fortunate to have the former and be gaining the latter.

Another component that Florida has identified as being supportive of this type of economic development is a university. His book views these institutions as having three elements that serve as magnets to creative people: technology, talent and tolerance. Technology is the physical and intellectual infrastructure that is one of the necessary tools in the creative process, talent is the ability to use this technology for the creative process and tolerance supplies the progressive and open climate that nurtures creative people pursuing the creative process. Two top-notch colleges probably exert a similar pull on creative people.

Willie Nelson

The book cites some examples of what it calls Creative Communities. The first one is Austin, Texas. During the 1980s and 1990s, Austin lured a number of high-tech businesses and creative people to town. When Florida interviewed the former mayor of Austin he was told that the city benefitted from the “laid-back, progressive, creative, lifestyle and music scene”. In the the former mayor’s view, it was the reason that companies and people moved from places like Silicon Valley to Austin.

The music scene did more than help attract high-tech companies, it fostered economic development built on local talent. When Willie Nelson returned home to Texas after becoming discouraged with the scene in Nashville, he played a number of local gigs, particularly at Armadillo World Headquarters, a prominent and/or notorious club in Austin. His presence, and relationships with nationally recognized artists, raised the visibility of the indigenous style of music.

Willie also recorded Spirit in Austin, an album that was a dramatic shift from Nashville-style country, pulling together local people and equipment of the highest quality for the recording process. This gathering and connecting of the human and physical infrastructure helped establish a base for increased professional opportunities for local musicians.

The steadily increasing vitality of this locally-based economic development gave birth to the Southwest Music and Media Conference, now known as SXSW. Originally conceived as an educational seminar designed to inform and instruct beginnning music professionals, the seed capital for the event came from the Austin Chamber of Commerce through the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The conference has grown from 700 registrants in 1987 to over 7,000 in 2004 and is internationally recognized as one of the premier annual events in the music industry.

Dublin, Ireland also found the “3 T” approach to be successful. The community invested heavily in its higher education system to create a work force that would appeal to technology companies. But the community realized that it wouldn’t be enough to give them the competitive advantage that they needed. Building on its deeply rooted culture of arts and music, Dubin was able to foster a bohemian scene that caught the attention of creative people from a variety of backgrounds and countries. In order to build a high-quality place to live, the city restored its historic Temple Bar district, bringing back the gathering spots of some of the greatest writers in western literature. Their efforts not only retained native musicians like U2 and Van Morrison, it convinced Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ron Wood to relocate to Dublin. Think of what those two could contribute to our local economy.

The final example that is cited is used to demonstrate how all 3 of the “T”s must be in place to attract creative people. Pittsburgh has technology in the form of the highly respected Carnegie-Mellon University. The people that are attracted to that school are indeed talented. Apparently the “T” that needs work in Pittsburgh is tolerance. Arts activities, at least those initiated by the younger generation, have had a difficult time finding support in the community. Many of the young talents, such as Deiselboy and Christina Aguilera, have left the city.

Christina Aguilera

Now on to the 1934 Auditorium. From these three case studies, a key ingredient for successful economic development appears to be a “scene”, featuring tolerance, a good mix of food and beverages, and plenty of local music.

The music scene in Northfield is ready to move to the next level. A number of our emerging and mid-career musicians export their talents to other communities and import the money back home. If we were able to build on this process, Northfield would experience additional economic develoment.

The 1934 building, reused as a community center for performing arts, could provide low-cost rehearsal space, storage space, office space and even modest performance space for Northfield’s music community. Not only would such a facility help take our musicians to the next level of professionalism, the local economic spin-offs would include music pulsating through the streets of downtown, where the sidewalks would be energized by pedestrians walking from dinner, to shopping, and, ultimately, to the show.

Perhaps I’ve read too much into these case studies. Perhaps I’m dreaming too big again. But it sure was fun to use U2′s, Willie’s and Christina’s names in the title and their pictures in the blog.

In his opening remarks to the group, Lindquist was clear that Artspace has not walked away from the project. Artspace was under the impression that their development agreement was going to be cancelled and only wished to respect the decision of the community.

With the recent statements by the School Board and Carleton College, Artspace is continuing to work with the Northfield arts community on a community arts center that will serve student artists, emerging artists and mid-career artists.

In attendance at today’s meeting were Bardwell Smith (Reuse Committee), Jill Enesvedt (artist), Jan Shoger (artist), Sam Demas (NAG), Andrew Commers (Artspace), Tim Goodwin (ARTech), Ross Currier (NDDC), Dixon Bond (Reuse Committee), Rebecca Bazan (NAG), Griff Wigley (NCO), Jane McWilliams (Reuse Committee), Sue Lloyd (artist), Kelley Lindquist (Artspace), Steve Wilmot (NAG), and Christie Clarke (Reuse Committee).

After Lindquist made his opening remarks, attendees asked about recent events, particularly any negotiating discussions. The group also made some comments about Artspace’s performance on this project to date. It was clear that everyone would benefit from better communication going forward.

Lindquist reiterated that Artspace’s product is a working artist project, that Northfield is right for this product, and that Artspace is committed to providing this type of project in Northfield.