“Believe.” That was the sign on Macy’s 34th St. today (and until past Christmas, presumably), clearly visible in you watched the Thanksgiving Day parade.
And that’s what many people would like to believe about Rocco Landesman’s campaign, from his perch as head of the National Endowment for the Arts, that creating arts districts all over the U.S. will lead to economic development.
Sadly, it’s not always true, as an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Greater New York section outlined. It’s about Peekskill, N.Y., which for the last two decades or so has been courting artists with low-cost loft spaces. Here’s the lede:
During better times, this city in the Hudson Valley hoped the construction of combination living-and-work loft space for middle-income artists would give a boost to its commercial center and help bring back the shoppers lost to nearby suburban malls.
A decade later, Peekskill’s experiment–one tried also elsewhere around the country–hasn’t turned out to be the economic engine some had hoped. Local officials recently eased rules for occupying the lofts in an effort to attract more artists.
The article, here, is far from definitive. It suggests that some artists love the spaces, but not enough have moved to Peekskill, and that those who have not created spillover economic activity, like people browsing local shops and galleries, has had been hoped. It’s not, as the author wrote, nearby Beacon, which — with DIA-Beacon — is drawing visitors.
I would love to believe, too, but putting pressure on the arts to be an economic engine is bound to lead to failure somewhere, and probably in many places. Peekskill is a cautionary tale.
For a local view of the town’s progress, here’s Chronogram Magazine’s 2009 take. And here is Peekskill’s explanation of its policies.
UPDATED, 11/26:
On the other hand, today’s New York Times has an article about Christo’s efforts to create an installation along the Arkansas River in Colorado. Some people in Salida, a key town, oppose it, others are for it, but the relevant paragraphs for this post is:
Many people say that things have changed in the years since Christo proposed the project in 1992. The fundamentals of the local economy, still connected in many ways to the old anchors of mining and freight, have shifted toward service and tourism. An arts community that barely existed has emerged and flowered, with people drawn by low rents and sweeping mountain vistas.
The recession, supporters say, has made “Over the River” more desirable in a community that is bound more to economic engines of tourism than it used to be.
Read that article here.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Chronogram (bottom).