Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Upcoming Event

Best Places to Work in Virginia

Hamburger Menu Hamburger Menu

Tag: Artspace

Roanoke EDA delivers on Artspace funding

Artspace, a Minnesota-based ​​nonprofit that develops affordable housing for artists and creative spaces, plans to build a mixed-use affordable housing project for artists and their families in Roanoke, at the massive Riverdale redevelopment project planned for the Southeast quadrant of the city.

“This will be their first Virginia project,” Duke Baldridge, vice-chair of the Roanoke Economic Development Authority, told members of City Council during an Oct. 7 meeting. “Not Norfolk, not Charlottesville, not Northern Virginia.”

Currently, Artspace has 59 affordable housing developments across the United States, with another 10 under construction, including the South Main Artspace lofts in Memphis, Tennessee, and the Tashiro Arts Building in Seattle.

Artspace’s project is estimated to cost $20 million, according to Baldridge. Tenants living at Roanoke’s Artspace project will need to make between 30% and 60% of the area median income, he told council members; 80% would be $48,350 for a one-person household.

In a letter dated Sept. 3, which Riverdale real estate director Ed Walker shared with the media last week, Artspace executives noted that they require local buy-in for their projects. They want $150,000 by Nov. 1 and another $300,000 by January 2025 to cover predevelopment.

The funding will allow Artspace to submit a low-income housing tax credit by mid-March 2025, according to the letter. “If it doesn’t happen now, it’s waiting a year,” Roanoke vice-mayor Joe Cobb stressed at the Oct. 7 City Council meeting.

At the meeting, it didn’t appear that Artspace could necessarily count on receiving the city’s financial support. Council member Patricia White-Boyd pointed out that October is not the time of year when city councilors draft their budget; that typically happens during the summer.

“My thing is: how do you pay for it?” she asked.

Members of Roanoke’s Economic Development Authority answered that question partially Wednesday by unanimously voting to cover the $150,000 payment, using authority funds. This buys council members more time to figure out how to cover the remaining $300,000 due in January.

“We’ve generally been enthusiastic about finding ways to support workforce housing and affordable housing,” Baldridge said Friday.

A step forward

Lucas Koski, vice president of consulting at Artspace, said the money from the EDA allows the nonprofit to “move forward” and begin the due diligence process for the Roanoke development. Construction on Artspace’s project could be completed within 36 months of receiving the tax credit, according to Artspace’s letter.

Roanoke, like most U.S. cities, is grappling with a housing shortage, especially for mid- to lower-income households. A quarter of Roanoke households live in housing that costs more than 30% of household income, according to city documents.

“We’re eager, if we can, [to] be a small part of the solutions,” said Baldridge, who is president of Dominion Risk Advisors, a personal risk management and insurance company in Roanoke.

EDA chair Braxton Naff, owner of Appalachian Craft Provisions, a catering and private chef business, said the authority members were enthusiastic about providing the funding and hopes it serves as a catalyst to rally public and private support. “We cannot think of a better project to begin filling the gap in affordable workforce housing and lay the foundation for an outdoor and arts destination in Riverdale and Southeast Roanoke.”

Walker, a real estate developer who has changed Roanoke’s landscape by developing apartments in historic buildings, forged an agreement with the city in 2023, in which the EDA loaned Walker $10 million for Riverdale. If the project’s developers invest at least $50 million in the project through 2040, the loan will be forgiven. The redevelopment will take place on 120 acres on the sprawling former campus of American Viscose, a closed rayon plant.

In a third-quarter summary about Riverdale that Walker distributed last week, he noted the project will offer as many as 750 multifamily housing units, including Artspace’s project. Residences would be in both redeveloped and new buildings that range from market rate to “very affordable,” according to the summary. Plans also call for a five-story boutique hotel with a rooftop bar, as well as a brewery, offices, recreation offerings and even a possible Airstream glamping location.

The summary notes that in the 18 months since the project began, more than 2 million pounds of debris have been removed, and an “extensive environmental remediation” has been undertaken.

“At some point it’s going to be a city within a city over there,” Naff said at the Oct. 7 city council meeting.

New leadership

When Roanoke’s former city manager, Bob Cowell, submitted his resignation in May, Walker told the Roanoke Rambler that the sudden leadership change could affect Riverdale’s rate of progress.

In June, Roanoke City Council named Lydia Pettis Patton, the first female city manager of Portsmouth, as interim city manager while a search for a permanent replacement is conducted.

During an interview last week, Roanoke economic development director Marc Nelson said he thinks Walker’s earlier comments reflected his concern about whether with Cowell’s exit, the city would continue to support the mammoth project — “whether that support would be there.”

“I think it’s very much there,” Nelson said definitively.

Cowell’s style, Nelson added, was to handle administrative details on the front end and bring matters to City Council. “As opposed to Dr. Patton, whose style is very much, ‘Let’s bring this to council and have it discussed in the open and council can make a decision,” Nelson says.

Walker said Friday he’s confident in Patton’s leadership. “There’s just no way to have imagined that somebody could … take the reins and make as make as much of a contribution as she has in a short time,” he noted.

While no action was taken by City Council on Oct. 7, a few members made no secret of their support for Riverdale and Artspace.

Bev Fitzpatrick, an interim member of Roanoke City Council and a longtime Roanoke leader, put the project in historical perspective: “When Norfolk and Western dieselized in 1958 and the Viscose plant closed in 1958, we had 10,000 people out of work. We never had that kind of challenge in Roanoke since. “

Before that happened, Fitzpatrick said Southeast Roanoke was a “middle class, strong neighborhood,” but the loss of jobs changed the area, noting the work the Presbyterian Community Center does to address homelessness and poverty in that quadrant of Roanoke.

The Riverdale development and Artspace’s project has the potential to transform Southeast, Fitzpatrick said. “I can think of nothing more important in the city than the health of Southeast and moving it forward in a fundamental way.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the details of Walker’s 2023 deal with the city. 

Artist housing developer considers Roanoke for first Va. project

Roanoke developer Ed Walker first tried to lure Artspace, a Minnesota-based ​​nonprofit real estate developer for the arts, to Roanoke in the early 2000s when he was transforming a former 1925 cotton textile mill into downtown living spaces. Artspace essentially ghosted him back then.

“It’s very, very, very, very difficult to get Artspace’s attention and to get them interested in a community,” Walker said. “I tried 25 years ago. It’s like trying to date somebody that just isn’t interested.”

However, Artspace sure seems to be swiping right on Roanoke these days.

On April 18, Walker held a celebration marking the first anniversary of his Riverdale mixed-use development, where, as part of an agreement with Roanoke’s city government, he has committed to invest at least $50 million through 2040 to redevelop the 120-acre, former rayon manufacturing site into residences, offices, retail outlets and eateries. The new planned neighborhood is also expected to have amenities such as outdoors-focused programming.

Wendy Holmes, senior vice president of Artspace, along with Greg Handberg, the nonprofit’s senior vice president of properties, and Kelli Miles, an Artspace project manager, visited the Riverdale celebration to deliver a presentation to a few hundred folks who turned out for the event, which was held underneath a tent populated with a sprinkling of folks dressed in costumes borrowed from the city’s recent Daisy Art Parade, including at least one roving, human-size chicken.

“We’re just really so excited about the potential here at Riverdale and here in Roanoke,” Miles told the crowd, who responded with cheers. “This potentially could be our very first actual brick-and-mortar project in Virginia.”

After conducting a six-month preliminary feasibility study that concluded in January and an arts market study in the first quarter of this year, Artspace leaders think the Riverdale development site could support up to 44 private studio spaces and up to 67 live/work housing units for artists and their households who make up to 80% of the area median income, which is $48,350 for a one-person household. Shared spaces, like gallery space, a clay studio and rehearsal spaces, could also be part of the development.

A man wearing a sack talks to a woman and another man who is holding a microphone.
Ben Bazak (left) talks with Wendy Holmes and Greg Handberg of Minnesota-based ​Artspace on April 18 at Roanoke’s Riverdale development. Photo by Beth JoJack/Virginia Business

Next, Artspace will work to identify sources of pre-development funding from public and private sources. “It’s typically $800,000 over a three-year period of time while we put the funding applications together for the capital costs,” Holmes said.

While it’s too early to estimate exactly how much the project will cost, Holmes guessed that it might come in between $12 million and $20 million, covered by a mix of private and public financing. Artspace, which will own the property, will likely hire a local property management company to oversee it.

The Roanoke Artspace development won’t happen overnight, though. The best-case scenario would be that construction could begin in 2026, according to Handberg.

Monthly rents would range from $480 for an efficiency to $617 for a two-bedroom apartment, according to Holmes — “so, very affordable for your market,” she said.

Artspace officials have studied the Riverdale complex and identified a few buildings that could fit the project, according to Holmes. Artspace’s housing and creative spaces would occupy just a small part of the sprawling Riverdale complex.

“So, we’re super-excited to match the data now with the physical opportunity,” she said.

Founded in 1979, Artspace creates affordable housing and creative spaces for artists. The organization has developed 58 projects in 22 states, including the South Main Artspace lofts in Memphis, Tennessee, and the Tashiro Arts Building in Seattle.

When Artspace first began talking with Walker, the organization’s leaders made it clear that the entire region would need to rally around the idea of creating housing and spaces for its artists.

“We said, ‘Ed, it has to be more than about you,'” Holmes said. “’We need the city. We need the state. And most importantly, we need the artists.’ And he said, ‘We have all that.’ And so we believed him, and it was true.”

Since last summer, Artspace officials have held meetings with Roanoke-area cultural leaders from marginalized communities to discuss space needs and equity issues. They have also met with Roanoke’s economic development leaders and city officials, as well as leaders from banks, foundations, Carilion and Virginia Tech to talk about potential financing.

“Ed is true to his word,” Holmes said. “He knows how to bring all these people together.”

The City of Roanoke has pushed over the last couple decades to support art as a driver for cultural and economic growth. In 2002, Roanoke City Council members approved a plan to use 1% of the construction cost of projects in the city’s capital improvement plan to purchase public art. In 2011, council members adopted the city’s first Arts and Cultural Plan, a document integrating arts and cultural efforts into the city’s comprehensive planning.

Today, dozens of pieces of public art can be found around the city. Last year, Roanoke’s city government won a $75,000 matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop the Arts Connect Neighbors program, which brings artists into local neighborhoods for performances or workshops.

A 2019 study put together by Washington, D.C., nonprofit Americans for the Arts reported that arts and culture generated $64 million annually for the city’s economy.

Making sure artists can afford housing is a way to keep them in the community, according to Douglas Jackson, Roanoke’s arts and culture coordinator. “I think it is economic development,” he says of the effort to bring the Artspace housing project to Riverdale.