Home Alone: The Plight of Santa Monica's Dwindling Artist Community

By Jorge Casuso

When consultants conducted a survey of Santa Monica's artists' spaces in May, there were 156 live/work and studio spaces in the city.

After the report on "Strategies to Preserve and Enhance Affordable Artist Housing and Studio Space" was typed up, the number had dropped to 117.

By the time the final draft was presented to the Arts Commission Monday night, there were only 78 studios left, half as many as there were just two months ago.

The dramatic numbers underscore the crisis facing Santa Monica artists who are rapidly being priced out of what were once vacant or underutilized buildings to make room for high-end film and entertainment industry facilities.

"There's nobody left," said Stephanie Blank, one of only three artists left in the once thriving six-acre artist community known as Drescherville. "And it happened so rapidly in the last several months. Everybody's gone."

"Artists in Santa Monica are sort of the canaries in the coal mine," said Todd Darling, who like the other two Drescherville artists is on a month-to-month lease. "We're signaling the direction everything is going in. We're facing a crisis, a mass exit. Artists are economic refugees."

Drescherville, a funky conglomeration of 26 studios in the city's industrial corridor, and the Drawing Room, a communal space with 24 studios on Olympic Boulevard, are the latest casualties in a mass exodus that has artists and their supporters scrambling for ways to stem the tide.

But the unique needs of artists for large well-lit spaces, coupled with an affordable housing crunch, makes it difficult to meet the demand, especially when retaining artists is not high on the list of priorities at City Hall.

"There's a lot of limited resources and competing needs in the city," said Jennifer Spangler, who prepared the report with AMS Planning & Research. "The need for artists' housing is not seen as high a priority as housing for the homeless or other groups."

The 42-page report makes the following recommendations:

• Designate a city department to be the lead agency charged with overseeing development, preservation and leasing of day studios and live/work spaces. The department would monitor the inventory of spaces, make referrals to artists and provide general assistance to developers.
  
• Review City building codes and explore ways to modify existing codes to better accommodate the mixed use nature of artists spaces. A committee would review similar code modifications in other municipalities.
• Establish a certification process to ensure that only artists would occupy the spaces. Those who work in the film and entertainment industry, as well as architects, would not fall under the definition of artist.
• Emphasize education to ensure that new policies and programs are enacted effectively.
• Expedite putting together development projects to avoid increased costs in an expensive and highly competitive real estate market.
• Change zoning to encourage development of artist spaces. This includes eliminating the "change in use" when converting from light industrial to day-studio use and reducing parking requirements. The report also recommends creating separate definitions for live/work for artists and live/work for residential use. In addition, it recommends possibly modifying the current district zoning to establish a specified artist studio district that would specifically encourage arts activity.
• Use City owned property for day studios and live/work spaces and include them in master planning efforts throughout the city. The report also recommends including day studios in new city facilities and prioritizing leasing opportunities for day-studios at Santa Monica Airport.
• Implement new funding programs aimed at private developers, nonprofit organizations and building owners to provide incentives for new development of affordable spaces for artists.
• Erect temporary structures or add studios atop existing parking structures.

Artists and their supporters acknowledged it will take more than recommendations to reverse the trend. Bruria Finkel suggested taking legal as well as political action.

"I have been working on this for 18 years," said Finkel, a former arts commissioner and driving force in Santa Monica's arts community. "If this moves it one inch it will be a lot."

"The City doesn't really consider artists as a priority," said former arts commissioner Neal Goldberg. "I think it's imperative that there be a concerted political effort to make it clear the recommendations are not something that is slipped under the rug.