Q: Tell me how you got acquainted with Pat and Jill.
CV: They came out for the American for the Arts Conference and I took this whole busload of people on a tour of Artspace's projects around the Twin Cities here. And the folks from Reno, the Sierra Arts Foundation, were, they said, "This is exactly what we need. We know just the building. This is it." So at one point they brought Kelley and I in their hotel room over there, a few blocks away and said, "We're going to get you out to Reno." And Kelley said, you know, "Sure", because we hear this all this time. And sure enough here we are ready to occupy a project.

Q: So was the decision to go to Reno easy?
CV: I think really that it was a series of explorations. I mean in the beginning we took the first step with them which was we're going to out and take a look at the project and give you our preliminary evaluation on whether or not we think can happen. And what we really do, and we were very up front about this, we try to figure out that we can't do the project. We try to rule it out when we go out there. .So we go out to look to see if there are enough artists and if there aren't we can say we don't think you can create an artists market out of thin air. There's not enough demand. We don't think there's a site that you can acquire in this city reasonably and feasibly. We don't think that you have the support you need from the public sector in order to pull off something like this. We got out there with all those intentions and every single one of those obstacles was not there. So we said, "Well, we think we can take the next step with you." And through this series of steps that we suddenly ended up with a realistic possibility of a project, with Sierra Arts saying we don't want to be a partner in this project. And now of course ready to occupy the building, they are full partners. So expectations change. Information changes and uh it's a different step-by-step process to where you get to than where you ever thought you were going to be. So often times, ArtSpace gets hired in to come into a community and try to make a prediction on how a project can come together. And we are going to have to say, "We'll give you the basis of our experience, which is we could never predict how the project is going to come together." But we could see if whether or not the major ingredients are in place.

Q: Tell me about the first trip out.
CV: Well, I was not on that original plane trip. So uh, Deirdre Schmidt, my colleague, and we work together on the starting of new projects at that time, was the person to go out. And I was assigned to go out to a different city, actually Trenton, NJ, all the way across the country. And so she had one set of expectations landing in Reno and those changed. And I had a different set of expectations landing in Trenton. But I can tell you there was a lot of talk around the office, "Oh, what's happening with that Reno thing?" And Deidre would say, "You know, the preliminary evaluation looks good." "Oh, really? Oh, well, go ahead and take the next step with them and let's see what happens." So what was the next step like with the Reno thing. "It's good!" So we just kept getting more and more positive visits out there that indicated to us that the challenges that were present in every project seemed to be able to be overcome in Reno, which is our litmus test for can we do a project. There are these challengers: there's money, there's support, there's artist markets, there are feasible sites. All of those things are challenges that we have wherever we go. And the real projects are ones that keep overcoming those challenges every time they pop up. And that's what was happening in Reno.

Q: So not all sites are going to make it.
CV: It's the one thing that is daunting to ArtSpace. Usually if we go so far as to say we want to work with you on this project, we're going to do whatever it takes to get that project done. Yeah so the challenger may be significant but we will just stay in there and work to overcome those challenges as long as it takes - with pretty much the exception of that one thing. If there's not a strong artists market, we can't create one out of thin air. So that has sometimes happened to us. There's a little city in northern Minnesota right on the Canadian border called International Falls. It's kind of famous for always being the coldest spot in the U.S. But there's a lot of warm people in International Falls. And they had an old school building. And the superintendent of schools knew of what ArtSpace had done at the school in Duluth, which is nearby. And it's my favorite project that ArtSpace has ever done, is that school building in Duluth. And he wanted to do the same thing in International Falls. We took a look at the building. The building was definitely right for that adaptive reuse. The leadership was obviously there. The superintendent had a lot of broad support from the whole community. The problem was when we got to the artists market part of the survey there were only six artists we could identify that were interested in relocating for that project. So that would leave us, by ArtSpaces' usual threshold, we could do two units, because we usually want three times as many artists as we're going to create spaces for so that there are essentially three artists standing in line for every space. That's when we can say with confidence to a community, to bankers, to the government, that we think this project is going to fill up immediately and is going to be successful in perpetuity. So here we had six artists. So we just had to tell them we think we have everything in place except one crucial thing. There are no artists. We had to say no. In Reno, fortunately, we found unexpectedly rich artists community.

Q: Why unexpectedly?
CV: I think it one of the best-kept secrets in the country, that arts community in Reno. And we've done a little bit of work in Las Vegas, NV as you know and discovered that they are trying to build an artists market from the ground up I think that that city is so dominated by the Strip and the casinos that they sort of think artists coming and going all the time. We have Wayne Newton, you know David Copperfield and the folks that are running the arts organizations in town are saying no we want local artists here members of the community who are creating here than what we've got going at the casinos because it is not so dominated really by that there has been a chance for the local arts to flourish So I want to credit Sierra Arts Foundation because supporting that. Where ever I think there is a strong arts country it's always being led by somebody like Sierra Arts.

Q: So what is the attraction to live/work space for artists?
CV: I think if you went to um that project in a few weeks when it was open you will not only see these big beautiful spaces that really are designed so that artists for a variety of media can live and work there, truly live and work there, and you ask them what is your favorite thing? They would not say because I have this 1,500 square foot space with 12-foot ceilings that rents for a really affordable rate. I don't think they would tell you that. I think they would tell you what their favorite thing is being in a community with their fellow artists. And it's that kind of magic that happens when creative people can get together and inspire each other . That's what you hear in community after community. Stop any artist walking down the hall, what do you like about living here? They say the fact that I live right down the hall from a dancer, a sculptor a poet and an actor. And if I lose inspiration I only just have to walk down the hall to be inspired by any number of my fellow artists. That is why I think they are so successful is because there is a synergy that happens from putting artists together under one roof.

Q: Clearly one project won't turn a city around. But there is real expectation that for a second wave of development?
CV: Yes. There is a very predictable second wave of development that follows a concentration of artists. It's not just going to be in Reno, but it is happening right now in cities all around the country, where there have been concentrations, either through the work of the city or organically where the artists have just sort of bubbled up in an area because it was affordable. You will find that there is this predictable second wave that typically involves young professionals - architecture firms, graphic design firms, software design companies, clothing designers - they will kind of move in around the artists because the artists changed the whole perception of the area. They're there, first of all, 24 hours a day because they are living and working on the premises so just about whenever you go it never has that abandoned look to it, which is what often before the artists, there are often abandoned buildings. And the artists can change that whole perception immediately and in a powerful way just by being there 24 hours a day. The other thing is what they do in the neighborhood. They build coalitions with the neighborhood. They create community gardening programs, take back the night programs, art crawls that are occupying the streets in the evenings, setting their studios open, all kinds of excitement. So those young professionals, I think, would like to be in that atmosphere. They will follow a concentration of artists wherever it happens to be. It's very predictable. Following them is a third wave, which include the things that now service that growing community - the restaurants, the cool little shops for them to not only buy food. You know, food coops often will pop up there that are sort of small and based upon organic products and natural foods, which the artists patronize in a big way. Those will come in. And then ancillary businesses will be the last. And now you have redevelopment. If you don't, if you haven't planned for that, if you haven't predicted that wave of redevelopment, what will also predictably happen is that the property values will rise so much that the artists who were responsible, who catalyzed that whole development, will be forced to leave because they won't be able to afford to be there any more. You'll have what we call the Soho Syndrome. The artists go there. Then they leave there and go to Tribeca. And the same thing happens all over again and now they leave Tribeca to Chelsea and I can't even follow them any more over there. That's happening in communities all over the country.

Q: Tell me about St Paul.
CV: St. Paul has in a way kind of set the standard for concentration of artists. There are 350 artists there within a block of each other. And I think you'd be really hard pressed to find that kind of concentration anywhere. So they have really found it valuable to have that concentration of artists. But lower town, which is where that is, was a ghost town until the artists came there. And within five years, there were 5,000 people living in lower town. So it was completely transformed. It was, in 1995, the fastest growing community in the whole Twin Cities metropolitan area, which is a fast growing area in and of itself. And the fastest was the area that the artists had spawned.

Q: One of those is Frogtown. Tell us about that.
CV: Frogtown was interesting because the building that the city of St. Paul wanted us to look at was on the fringe of where families were living and industry started. And often times on those ridges between industry and family there's lot of problems. There's crime. The houses are often run down. And we find that in many, many communities that we visit. So they really were hoping to bridge that place where people work in the industrial section and they place where people live in the family and single family homes. And I think they were right that artist live/work space was exactly the right thing for that. They were living and working there. It was the right bridge. What happened, of course, was that all of the homes that were around were distressed. The property values were stagnant, if not going down. The homes were in disrepair. And the artists were really, I think, one of the only groups the city of St Paul could have attracted to the area. They are our urban pioneers. They went into this area and reclaimed it completely. Not only did they do improvements to the building well beyond what ArtSpace had done to make it livable but by putting gardens and planting trees and cleaning up, and just picking up the trash that accumulates on a day to day basis there. They made that little block that they occupy a place of pride for the neighborhood. So we could see that the homes that were around there those people started to take pride as well because it may be seen possible to reclaim their neighborhood. There was a big adult business that was nearby, bookstores, peep shows, you know I don't want to amendment debate over it but it was not the kind of thing that the neighborhood wanted for where their kids were and where their schools were. The artists were really instrumental in shutting the whole place down. Photographers would go out there and snap pictures of customers going in and out of the building and publish them in the local paper. And it was very hard on the business. So those kinds of efforts, because there was a sudden concentration of people who were really motivated to reclaim that neighborhood, it just gave them that critical mass that they needed. Now that neighborhood has become completely transformed. Property values are on the rise. You would be hard pressed even to find even the smallest of homes there that isn't well taken care of now with pride. And I think the artists are completely responsible for that.

Q: But the buildings are usually in depressed areas.
CV: I think it is often the opportunity that is presented to ArtSpace because very often a building that we have transformed is a problem for the city. It's sort of an albatross around their neck. It's this big, often times historic building that they don't feel comfortable tearing down because it has some historic value. But nobody is making any credible attempt to redevelop it. They can't really attract housing to the area because of the problems associated with blighted areas. You know, school that are not what they should be, safety for the families, the presence on the street, the police response time, I mean there's a whole kind of syndrome associated with these areas that cities, I think, perceive that ArtSpace can really help change. So by having those opportunities available to ArtSpace I think that we have fed in to the urban pioneer thing. But I think that was originally just done by the artists themselves out of necessity. Where could they find large spaces with fairly important scale like we are in here with tall windows, high ceilings that would give them lots of natural light and the ability to work at a rate that they could afford? There's no way to get that in the high rent district. So I think by necessity they moved into these areas and began to reclaim them. And that's where the urban pioneer reputation came from. I think that wherever you create something and design it for the need of artists you will be able to bring them in because they are so under served. Just think of it this way. If you're a painter and you work on a ten-foot canvas and every apartment in Minneapolis that you can rent has 8 1/2-foot ceilings there's no place where you can live and work. No where. So it's a radically under-served population. So if you can create something and design it with the need of that artists community, they will come there. That may often be a distressed area. You know ArtSpace has been approached by other opportunities as well that are not in distressed areas. And so in that case, it isn't an urban pioneer scenario.