A wrinkle on BTMFBA: let the city/county own the cultural facility, while you operate it (San Francisco and the Fillmore Heritage Center)

There's an interesting article in The Grio, "Black residents demand San Francisco give center as reparations after destroying Fillmore neighborhood," about how residents and community organizations in the Fillmore district of San Francisco are advocating for the city to give residents the Fillmore Heritage Center, to own and operate. 

The FHC is a ground floor space, 50,000 s.f., with an adjacent 112 space parking lot, that is connected to a separate 12-story condominium building.

FHC has languished for many years, after its main and opening tenant, Yoshi's jazz club, went through bankruptcy in 2012 and shut down for good in 2014, which in turn led to the closure of the adjacent restaurant, 1300 on Fillmore, a couple years later.   

Two nonprofits were given control of the space, which is the ground floor of a building with housing above, and programmed it aggressively, but a shooting and the pandemic have combined to leave the facility empty.

Fillmore Heritage Center is seen on the corner of Fillmore and Eddy Streets on Thursday, November 2, 2017 in San Francisco. Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle 2017.

The nonprofits estimate it will cost about $420,000 per year to operate ("Will new plan for S.F.’s Fillmore Heritage Center revive long-shuttered jazz club and community hub?," San Francisco Chronicle).

Reparations argument.  The advocates are calling on the city to give them the facility as a form of reparations for planning and policy decisions over the decades that have harmed the predominately black neighborhood.

Reparations is a misguided argument: they need plans and implementation mechanisms.  I think the reparations argument is misguided, or at least, aren't well-focused.  

Graphic/map of the Chicago Loop from a Wall Street Journal travel article illustrates the concept of "cultural mapping" at the neighborhood scale.  Illustration by John S. Dykes.

The issues are two-fold: (1) creating viable revitalization/equity ("Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty")  and cultural plans for the neighborhood; and (2) creating a viable operating plan and implementation mechanism for the Fillmore Heritage Center. 

Why did Yoshi's and the restaurant fail/Arts as consumption.  Another question that doesn't seem to be asked is what happened? ("1300 on Fillmore Closed," Eater SF, "The Addition, Formerly Yoshi's in San Francisco, to Abruptly Close," KQED/PBS, "How the Yoshi's Deal Went Down," New Fillmore).

I think the problem is the "heritage center" was really a concert facility and restaurant, focused on "arts as consumption" (""Arts district planning" in Arlington County | Many communities don't know the difference between arts as production and arts as consumption").

The large facility--28,000 s.f.--needed a lot of people to fill it up, multiple days a week, and the market for jazz is small compared to other genres.  

Plus, the firm took out many millions of dollars of loans to pay for outfitting the facility and revenues weren't strong enough to both operate the business and pay down debt.   

The adjoining but separately owned restaurant was dependent on concert attendees for a significant amount of its business, and when the facility shut down, they lost almost 40% of their business.

This project, while laudatory, was probably inadequately considered in terms of overall demand and the cultural offer within the Fillmore neighborhood, and when costs to develop it ballooned, it was set up to fail.

Buying/Controlling buildings.  My BTMFBA--Buy the M.F. Building Already-- writings focus on how cultural organizations and disciplines to have more control over their future and economic sustainability, need to own (or at least control for the long term) their own buildings.  

The primary recommendation is to do this through culture/arts-based community development corporations, acting at the scale of a city or county, to buy, hold, build, and operate such facilities.

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

Now, it doesn't have to be a CDC specifically, sometimes smaller scale efforts work just fine.

Colleges might do this, for example Emerson College in Boston owns and operates significant theater buildings, as do other colleges, Seattle has a couple of different nonprofits running multiple performing arts/theater facilities, ("Seattle preservation: Pike Place Market, Neptune Theater, and the Cinerama"), while in Greater Philadelphia, there is a theater management company, Renew Theaters, that operates community theaters which are each owned individually. 

My writing on cultural planning has been sparked in part by the financial failure of cultural facilities and institutions "going it alone" ("Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," 2007; "Cultural organizations in financial exigency," 2020).

And even though I recommend CDCs with more heft as the primary actors, like the Playhouse Square CDC in Cleveland, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Brooklyn Academy of Music CDC, and Takoma Arts in Washington State, there are plenty of one-off nonprofits successfully running cultural facilities.

I wonder if the Fillmore Heritage Center "idea" is a bit misguided in that the community likely lacks the financial capacity to own, maintain, operate and program the facility. 

If they had that capacity, they would have picked up the management contract for the facility by now, and would be operating the FHC already. 

Although it's possible that the FHC Equity Partners initiative has the capacity, as it includes a couple of community development organizations with the experience and track record of developing, owning and operating a significant property portfolio.

But the group of people and organizations agitating for ownership of the Fillmore Heritage Center ought to think long and hard about what they want and how best to accomplish it.

1.  Why not let the city continue to own and maintain the facility?, thereby off-loading the expense, which will only get bigger as the building ages.

2.  How about focusing on creating a robust nonprofit with the mission and capacity to operate it?

3.  And the demonstration of the ability to deliver a great and successful program of events and activities.

Miami's Liberty City and Overtown districts as models.  There are many models, including some interesting organizations in Miami, in the Liberty City district ("Social infrastructure in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami") and Overtown.  From the blog entry:

• African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, is part of the county culture agency, has programs in visual and performing arts for children and youth, presents various arts events including black theater, and has residency and apprenticeship programs for artists ("African Heritage Cultural Arts Center Shapes the Next Generation of Miami's Black Creatives," Miami New Times).

The original theater has been expanded into a cultural complex with the addition of a new building immediately adjacent.  

In Overtown, another historically black Miami neighborhood, one remarkable civic asset is the Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida.  

In addition to its ever expanding archives on the Black experience in South Florida, the organization also operates the Historic Lyric Theater, the city's first theater building dedicated specifically to the Black community when it opened in 1915.

Leimert Park, Los Angeles.  Another example is the Leimert Park Village district in Los Angeles, which is seen as the cultural heart of the city's black community ("Los Angeles's Black Pride Taking In the Retro Vibe of Leimert Park," Washington Post, Slideshow, Los Angeles Times).  

The Vision Theatre building is a fabulous example of art deco architecture ("Leimert Theater: Envisioning a Neighborhood Landmark," KCET/PBS).  Photo: Luis Simco, Los Angeles Times.

Historically it has been a great scene for music, from blues to hip-hop.

The city is restoring the Vision Theatre and repositioning it as a community arts and performance facility, which will reopen next year (Vision Theatre / Manchester Junior Arts Center, LA Department of Cultural Affairs).  

Note that the Vision Theatre will be operated the way I suggest for the Fillmore Heritage Center.  The city will own the building, and a third party community-focused organization will operate it ("LA seeks proposals to operate Vision Theatre in Leimert Park," Hey SoCal).

-- RFP webpage and document 

Other cultural elements include the annual

Leimert Park Village Book Fair, featuring more than 200 authors, the open air Destination Crenshaw cultural interpretation walk ("Destination Crenshaw art project aims to reclaim the neighborhood for black L.A.," Los Angeles Times, Destination Crenshaw webpage, Perkins+Will), and the annual Juneteenth street festival.

Concept for Destination Crenshaw, Perkins+Will