New form of BTMFBA in San Francisco

"Buy the Mother F****** Building Already" is a series of entries about best practice and worst practice in buying, holding, and developing properties for arts and culture related uses.  It's definitely a reaction to all the lamenting of arts related uses being displaced.

-- "BTMFBA: the best way to ward off artist or retail displacement is to buy the building," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: Baltimore and the Area 405 Studio," 2021
-- "When BTMFBA isn't enough: keeping civic assets public through cy pres review," 2016
-- "BMFBTA revisited: nonprofits and facilities planning and acquisition," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: artists and Los Angeles," 2017
-- "BTMFBA Chronicles: Seattle coffee shop raises money to buy its building," 2018
-- "Dateline Los Angeles: BTMFBA & Transformational Projects Action Planning & arts-related community development corporation as an implementation mechanism to own property," 2018
-- "A wrinkle on BTMFBA: let the city/county own the cultural facility, while you operate it (San Francisco and the Fillmore Heritage Center)," 2021 
-- "Speaking of the need for arts-related CDCs to buy, hold, and operate arts facilities: Seattle and BTMFBA | The Inscape Arts building," 2022

Granted, displacement is bad.  My lament was the lack of systematic, community-wide initiatives to buy, hold, develop and preserve properties for arts and culture related uses.  Obviously, that's not something you can expect an individual artist to be able to do.  But it is something that a community development corporation tasked to serve the arts and culture community can do.

And it starts with decent cultural planning:

-- "Revisiting stories: cultural planning and the need for arts-based community development corporations as real estate operators," 2018

The preeminent example is SEMAEST of Paris, although it deals primarily with retail uses.  No reason the model can't be extended to arts and culture.  And there are some examples of arts focused CDCs in the US that are very good including Playhouse Square District Development Corporation in Cleveland and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust which operate on a large scale, and smaller groups.  There are also variants that focus on specific disciplines, like theaters.

-- "Seattle preservation: Pike Place Market, Neptune Theater, and the Cinerama," 2021

The San Francisco Chronicle reports ("Helping arts groups buy their buildings in San Francisco") on an organization, CounterPulse, which is an organization that supports arts groups, has just purchased its building, working with an organization called the Community Arts Stabilization Trust.  Although CAST functions like a community-wide arts-focused CDC, so maybe it's not so different.  From the article:

CounterPulse, a staple in the city’s punk arts scene for over 30 years, began as a modern dance hub. It has since expanded its scope to projects like public murals and workshops for neighborhood residents including skateboard decoration and designing modular furniture on wheels tailored to living on the street. The organization estimates that it helped 198 artists last year with support ranging from subsidized studio space to artist residencies to a place to stay when in need (an artist displaced by recent storm flooding lived in its office for two weeks).  ...

If CAST has its way, CounterPulse will be the first of many arts organizations to make a permanent home in the city. It has raised $50 million to buy and manage five buildings, with five more in the pipeline. Altogether, it expects to add 150,000 square feet of workspace for Bay Area artists and community organizations, the majority of which will be in San Francisco’s downtown areas. 

CAST currently supports another Tenderloin fixture, Luggage Store Gallery, through the same model, and is developing agreements with 12 more arts nonprofits in the Bay Area, eight of which are in San Francisco’s downtown core. If they all make it through the pipeline, San Francisco could see 10 downtown arts organizations buy their buildings within the decade. 

Not all arts nonprofits have the funding for such a hefty purchase, and the model favors those with deep pockets. For CounterPulse, the seven-year fundraising hustle proved the main challenge, though Phelps noted that CounterPulse buying a building attracted new funders who hadn’t come around before. ...

Previously, CAST focused on supporting the longevity of arts nonprofits by offering long-term, rent-stabilized leases. But it has found that ownership unlocks a different level of stability and latitude. It removes the variable of rent and allows Phelps to project out the organization’s finances longer. Because CounterPulse paid for the building in full, it isn’t saddled with monthly mortgage payments, freeing up the funds it raises to be invested in its programs. The building is now an asset the nonprofit can leverage, unlike cash. Ownership makes a psychological difference too, for both the organization and its neighbors, according to Eng. It sends a message: It’s part of the community and there to stay. 

Rooting such organizations in San Francisco would stem the outflow of arts and culture that has been ongoing for some time. UC Berkeley and University of Toronto Professor Karen Chapple, who has studied the possibility of a Mid-Market arts district, is used to seeing local arts nonprofits disappear. 

According to the article, CAST is considered unique:

Other cities are experimenting with their own pilot programs. CAST’s Eng has gotten calls from cities from Boston to Sydney inquiring about its creative financing. London based its Creative Land Trust on CAST’s model, after hearing about it at a World Cities Culture Summit. 

But it isn't.  Except for having financing.

Again, what's needed isn't particularly astounding.  It's just not being done.