CULTURAL COALITION BATTLES CITY

by by Megan Say @yahoo.com>

Discussion of the rent crisis in Boston, how it is affecting the artistic community. The Fort Point Cultural Coalition's battle against big city property owners and related issue affecting San Francisco's similar crisis.

Over the past year I have seen and heard very little discussion about the state of the arts on a grass root/community level. The arts and support of the arts has had no mention in the large demonstrations that have been taking place in Boston and around the Country. Among all of these world difficulties and concerns, it seems like we have forgotten about one of the most imprtant channels for unified voice and consciousness. What about the arts?

Yes, there is a powerful undergound scene happening and the puppetry and demonstration circus has been leaving a tremendous impact on the public's impression of what anarchy produces; but what happens affter the barricades are dismantled and there are no longer clusters of masquerading protesters? Where do we all go to regroup and discuss for the next battle? Over-priced and most often tiny rooms (I looked at a 8ft by 6ft room renting for $380) are becoming even more difficult to find and maintain. Rents are outrageous and continue to bewilder those of us who have no hope of purchasing living accomidations or even are able to say we have in our posessession enough money to pay for more than one month's rent and bills?

Recently, over the last year, the artists living in the Fort Point area of Spouth Boston have been dealt a heavy hand as twenty-five artists were displaced from a well-known squat in an old yarn mill on Stillings Street. Currently ther resides a parking lot, that is never fulll while people struggle to find affordable housing and a corner to call a studio to continue working on their self-expression. Some residents were even promised relocation only to be evicted again a short time later.

The entire Fort Point area is under seige as one of the oldest Boston land management companies is selling off the entire area for more parking lots, market rate condominiums and dot com offices. To combat this gross raping of a major cultural stronghold, the Fort Point Cultural Coalition has begun the slow process of creating more publicity for this home town catastrophy with a syposium discussion set on a lot at the Market Street and Midway Street site on October 22, 2000. A "coalition of non-profit organizations and individual artists that seeks to preserve, promote and expand this unique cutral commmunity [and seeks to] affirm the cultural, econmic and social contributions that their neighborhood makes to the city of Boston..."

The Boston Warf company owns 95% of the area and seemingly does not care what happens to the 500 residents and many cooperatives such as Mobius and the Revolving Museum who are at risk of being evicted over the next 4 years as leases run up and rents quadruple. Within a week of meeting with agents from the Boston Warf Comapny representatives from the FPCC and the FPAC (Fort Point Arts Community) were told four brick factory buildings near Market street and Midway Street were not for sale, 14 buildings in the area were bought by Beacon Capital Partners. This is just one step closer to what looks like a clean sweep of the artists to make way for a "tourist attraction for engineers" and an expansion of the financial district. In preparation to start buying some of the buildings, the FPCC was promised $50,000 for a feasibility study but was denied the ability to gain site control by Boston Warf.

This hard ball dealing is what artists in San Francisco are also stricken with. Massive protests have already begun to gain national recoginition in the underground sceene as hundreds of artists,long-standing performance groups, galleries, muscians, clubs and co-ops of all flavors have no place to live or continue their arts. Instead are a plethera of .coms and their employees.

Joan Holden, the San Francisco Mime Troupe's playwright since 1967 was on the panel discussing the epidemic and toting warnings to be on the look out for more of this cultural cleansing as the battle in SF is leaving many scars in building rights. After finally being granted zoning laws that stated live/work loft spaces had to only house for artists working and living in their spaces it provided only to be an open window for land owners to get money granted from the city for cheap renovations for supposedly new artist spaces while they continue to rent at the quadrupled market prices to dot com's and their employees and silicone valley spin-offs.

Currently arts organinzations in the bay area are trying to instate propsition L to reorganize the loft laws and fix the invasion of "creative multi-media companies." Over the October 21/22 weekend the SF Mime Troupe performed their newest creation "City for Sale&" at the Strand Theater in Dorchester. The hillarious performance was a documentary about the artists' forced exodous from the industrial areas by greedy building owners and a slack government whose hands are so deep in the pockets of the city contractors it is rendered almost powerless to help.

Other representative on the panel discussion were Joan Leyton an affordable housing advocate from Veda Urban and Director of City Life, Jane Deutsch, Board President and a founding member of the FPAC, Ted Landsmark (moderator), President, Boston Architectural Center, and Cheryl Forte, A Fort Point business owner and founding member of FPAC and FPCC. All members of the panel pleaded to create better awareness of this problem as for 25 years they have lived and nursed the Fort Point area into a thriving community by keeping the area safe and in tact only to have gained the title of "caretaker community" by the developers and contracters who can't wait to see them leave.

Solutions presented by the audience after discussion included proposing percent funds from the MFA on all their donations to protect and subsidize struggling artists; creating new identities that will appeal to the suburbanites that treck into the city once a year to partake in the open-studios weekends; look towards cities such as SoHo, Providence, RI, and New Orleans as models for growth; and making sure while new developers come to the area they make a percentage of their remodeled buildings for arts and non-profit organizations as the new property owners of the "we were here first/should of been ours" buildings, Beacon Caital Partners have been graciously discussing.

Panelists suggested that an more humble attitude is in order as all smaller arts cooperatives should immediately begin a movement to gain publicity in their locality to emphasize to town council and local government orangizations the importance of a thriving arts communtiy, so that when talking to landlords the backing of the town is present and dropping exclusive personas to create wider acceptance of supportive public.

In summary, the symposium should pose as a warning to all artists to banish the shy introspective, univolved demenor that prevents us from dealing with these issues until they have escalated out of control.

"...and then they came for me and there was noone left to speak."

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