- AboutThe opportunity to transform the TL into a livable and vibrant low and moderate income community has never been better than it is today. People who are active in the community, and particularly those who have worked here for many years, realize this NOMNIC was created in 1999 to start up and operate a sidewalk cleaning program. With grants from foundations, funds from DPW and voluntary contributions from property owners and businesses, NOMNIC operated the sidewalk cleaning program for 6 years. About 1/3 of all property owners contributed to its $250,000 annual budget. In 2005, NOMNIC sponsored a drive to create the TL CBD, an assessment district. NOMNIC obtained the support of 65% of the property owners by weighted average. Support was community wide; members of the Coalition on Homelessness participated in drafting the Plan. St Anthony’s, Hastings, Hilton, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, most of the housing non profits, and many others, voted for the $850,000 annual assessment. The TL CBD is the largest assessment district in SF, and virtually no one in SF’s government expected NOMNIC to be successful in obtaining the necessary votes. Following creation of the CBD, the sidewalk cleaning program was absorbed into the CBD and greatly expanded.…
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Updates & Letters
Hats Off
Greetings from the Tenderloin Economic Development Project – we are long overdue for a check-in and update! There’s lots of good news to report and congratulations to extend. Let’s get right to it.
Central Market Economic Strategy
Hats off to the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) for the successful completion of a very comprehensive Economic Strategy plan for mid-Market. City Hall has been criticized (rightly, it can be argued) for failing to take on our common, devastated cultural and commercial corridor, leaving it to languish for decades. The undertaking and completion of a plan, inspired by local efforts to finally challenge the demoralizing status quo, was brave of OEWD. It was also timely given the much-welcomed attention to our long-neglected area under the new political leadership of Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Jane Kim.
In drafting the Strategy, OEWD conducted some of the most thorough community outreach I have seen from any organization, public or private. OEWD heard from numerous stakeholders, many low-income, that they wanted cleaner, safer, civil streets and long-vacant commercial spaces filled with businesses. No surprise here!
But there goes Redevelopment
Just as Mayor Lee enthusiastically endorsed the Central Market Economic Strategy, the means to invest in many hoped-for improvements took a big blow with the dissolution of redevelopment. It is critical for the Tenderloin and mid-Market that we regroup quickly and effectively in order to capitalize on the considerable momentum that has been generated by new housing, cultural and commercial projects. One promising approach is the utilization of Infrastructure Finance Districts (IFDs). This tool can generate critically-needed funds to invest in cultural and educational facility projects otherwise financially infeasible to develop. Major dead and underutilized assets like the Golden Gate Theater, Market Street Cinema, Crazy Horse, the Strand, and the blighted properties of the 950 Project can be brought back to life with an infusion of funds from IFDs.
The city took a bold step in undertaking the development and adoption of the Central Market Economic Strategy. It has effectively raised the bar for itself. Local philanthropy has taken note and is beginning to heed the call (with some dramatic announcements on this front to come!), but the city, in continued close collaboration with local stakeholders, must play a leading role in facilitating continued progress in revitalizing the Tenderloin and mid-Market.
The alternative? Market Street’s continued revitalization will be shaped by market forces alone and we will lose our opportunity to maximize the presence and positive social impacts of cultural and civic facilities and programming.
Safe Passages – Drug trafficking down on Turk and Mason Streets – Great Community Organizing
Hats off to the organizers of Safe Passage, an important initiative to enhance the safety of our children in the Tenderloin. From Boys & Girls Club of San Francisco, one of Safe Passage’s principal sponsors:
On Monday, January 16 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), the Safe Passage Sidewalk Mural launched as a way to address safety concerns in the Tenderloin Community. 50 or more volunteers participated in painting the sidewalk mural as part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. The sidewalk mural will serve as a visual pathway of yellow bricks that connects schools, youth-service providers and community centers so children and teens can recognizably walk to and from their destinations safely.
Other organizers of this important effort: La Voz Latina, Chinatown Community Development Center and the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District.
Of course, we should perhaps ask ourselves why should it be necessary to undertake a major organizing campaign to enable our kids to safely take a walk around the block. On this point, one day I ran into an “organizer” for an affordable housing developer and asked him what can we do about the heavy drug trafficking on Turk Street, all conducted by individuals who don’t live in the neighborhood. His answer seemed to be “wait until there is a political and macro-economic solution to the structural and historically inequitable socioeconomic capitalist system that results in public disorder.”
I get this sort of answer fairly regularly on a number of issues related to Tenderloin challenges; and the quest for social justice is vitally important and laudable indeed. Of course, it would be even more laudable if those offering this response lived on the corner of Turk Street waiting for the global resolution alongside everyone else on the block. But none of them do, and endless waiting is a bit unfair to ask of poor folks who have to live with this stuff every day. So hats off to our Captain Joe Garrity for taking up the mantle of protecting our turf from those who would openly disrespect the Tenderloin and exploit its vulnerable residents, and to the Tenderloin Housing Clinic for its advocacy that raised public awareness on this issue. TNDC also weighed-in to support this important effort. This collaboration represents one of the year’s best examples of effective community organizing and has produced, for a time at least, a reprieve for Tenderloin residents who can now walk their streets free of open trafficking.
Concentrating extreme poverty to the staggeringly high levels of Turk & Taylor, or anywhere for that matter, with a commensurate need for a heavy police presence and interventions is a disastrous and punishing policy for low-income people. That said, success should be recognized, and hopefully will be lasting.
Zendesk, Food Security and Community Empowerment
Hats off to the crew at Zendesk for partnering with the local community on food security issues. While the Tenderloin is fortunate to have one of the best farmers markets in the country, there are still challenging food security issues to contend with in a population that has extremely limited food preparation facilities.
A question for the City Administrator’s Office: can we change the name of future agreements with companies like Zendesk from Community Benefits Agreements to Community Partnership Agreements? The latter term is much more empowering. We here in the Tenderloin have great people, non-profit organizations, for-profit companies, schools – in short, we have lots to offer. We are a capable community standing ready to partner with any company that comes to the area, as equals. So, bring on the partnerships!
New, Mixed-Income Housing Coming That Will Change Everything
New housing is coming to the neighborhood that will add desperately needed residential diversification, attract employers and get people back out and about on our once busy city sidewalks. (I live in the Tenderloin a block from 7th & Market and can attest it is often desolate, especially after rush hour, when I almost expect to see tumbleweed blowing down the middle of Market Street, in the heart of downtown San Francisco).
The line-up! Crescent Heights at 10th & Market: 749 units; Avalon Bay at 9th & Market: 260 units; Trinity Place Phase Two , 8th & Mission, 417 units; Mercy Housing, Golden Gate Avenue & Jones Street, 99 units. We’ll soon have thousands of new local residents out buying coffee in the morning, taking their clothes to the cleaners, eating at restaurants, buying produce at the farmers market, going to shows, museums, gallery openings, concerts and dance performances. We all greatly look forward to a far more diverse, denser and vibrant city life that is coming (back!) to the Tenderloin and mid-Market.
What Original Joe’s and the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA have in common
Immediately after arriving in the Tenderloin 3 years ago I was deluged by tales of a place called Original Joe’s. Everyone lamented the neighborhood’s loss after a fire caused the fabled restaurant to close.
My big chance to see and experience what everyone was so passionate about finally came 3 weeks ago in North Beach, the new home of Original Joe’s. What I saw was a great communal dining room, a public meeting space where a great, diverse cross-section of San Franciscans came to break bread and say hello to neighbors.
This experience reminded me of the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA that lived for one hundred years at 220 Golden Gate Avenue. This storied and important institution closed about 2 years ago after selling the landmark building, later to reopen in a small space down the block that serves as an interim location until the new Central Y gets built. My office was on the fourth floor of the Y; each day I saw the same great, diverse cross-section of San Franciscans, many of them Tenderloin residents, enter through its front doors.
Sitting at the new Original Joe’s bar and looking over the restaurant floor, I understood all the testimonies and grief over the loss of a member of the Tenderloin Family. And it became clear to me how in a short period of time the Tenderloin lost not just a restaurant and wellness center but two of its great civic meeting places.
We wish Original Joe’s well in their new location – the Duggans are a wonderful family.
And we look forward to the realization of the development of our new Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA, as promised to the neighborhood, and the restoration of one of the Tenderloin’s great civic and community health assets.
And, of course, Hats off to the Arts!
Good news on the arts leadership front as Tom DeCaigny takes over as Director of Cultural Affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission. Tom’s arrival has breathed new life and energy to an important agency just as the organic evolution of the Tenderloin/mid-Market’s dynamic art ecosystem is growing. We all welcome Tom and the positive spirit he brings to our community.
One to watch! The entrepreneurial leadership at Cutting Ball Theater is organizing a Restaurant Crawl during their world premiere run of Tenderloin this coming May. Be sure to visit their website and get the word out so folks can enjoy dinner and a show, a once classic and hopefully returning mainstay of a local arts-based economy here in the Tenderloin.
Speaking of restoring our local arts-based economy, we’re going to save the big update on the transformative 950 Project for our next letter. What we can say is we’ll have some very good news, and it all started over some crowd-pleasing breakfast waffles at farmerbrown.
Lastly, did you all the read about the wonderfully moving story of music education in a Bronx nursing home and the positive impact it had on residents’ lives? This reminded me of a fantastic San Francisco group – the Center for Music National Service - that extends the healing and developmental power of music to underserved communities. It’s our hope we can plug the Center in with some of our equally fantastic Tenderloin youth-serving organizations like the Vietnamese Youth Development Center, Tenderloin Boys & Girls Club, Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA and DeMarillac Academy in the year to come.
Cheers,
elvin
p.s. New culinary recommendations!
We’re going with Burmese Kitchen on Larkin Street for the best new find of 2011. A great cuisine with influences from China and India. Food is excellent, owners and wait staff are friendly, ambiance is comfortable.
And for that desperately needed fresh cup of joe we’ve been saved many an afternoon by the great French press coffee at Mirtille @ 87 McAllister, soon to be joined by Philz coffee on Larkin & Golden Gate. Congrats to UC Hastings on bringing Philz to the neighborhood!
NY Times on Mid Market Revival
TEDP’s work in rebuilding the community through the arts featured in the New York Times article Mid Market Revival.
While the long-awaited transformation of the area is far from complete, a distinct cultural flavor has begun to emanate from it. It is an experimental aesthetic, a style of creative risk that mirrors the pre-gentrified surroundings.
video: Quentin Easter Tribute
A most eloquent testimony on the importance of the arts to society.
“Quentin Easter Tribute”
Excerpt from interview with Quentin Easter Done By Rapt Productions for their documentary film “Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco”.
Summer 2011 / Calling All Entrepreneurs
Summer of Progress
The recent monumental victory by Supervisors Kim and Chui, Mayor Lee, and the Office of Economic & Workforce Development to bring Twitter to mid-Market will be measurable in hundreds of thousands of square feet of occupied office space and thousands of new employees out and about patronizing local small businesses. Less measureable but immensely valuable is the sense of the possible our new political leadership and the arrival of a company of Twitter’s stature bring to mid-Market.
Equally important to the Twitter news, neighborhood residents, business owners (employers), and affordable housing activists recently made their voices heard protesting against the rampant drug-dealing on Turk and Mason streets. Organized by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, this was a great example of community advocacy. A few blocks west on Leavenworth Street, community activists, including kids holding signs declaring “WE LIVE HERE,” have begun protesting the open-air dealing which takes place daily directly in front of a neighborhood children’s center and across the street from one of our elementary schools.
And, not to forget the arts, our friends at Burning Man have launched their new venture -Burning Man Project – in the neighborhood. The Burning Man Project is joining an already fantastic local art ecosystem: American Conservatory Theater; SHN; the Luggage Store Gallery; Alonzo King Lines Ballet; EXIT Theatre; Cutting Ball Theater; PianoFight (coming soon); Boxcar Theater; Kunst-Stoff Dance Company; SF Recovery Theater; Gray Area Gallery; FoulPlay Productions; Hospitality House Gallery; Warfield Theatre; Denia Dance Company; Intersection for the Arts and CounterPulse.
We now have a fascinating convergence of tech and art & culture worlds shaping a uniquely San Francisco destination and experience with civic engagement at its core. How will this evolve over the coming months and years? Let’s all stay tuned.
Calling all Entrepreneurs
Our call to action at TEDP has always pivoted on a spirit of entrepreneurialism and collaboration. Whereas conventional development and philanthropy professionals have consistently advocated waiting for government fiscal recovery, establishment of a redevelopment project area or some other source of external salvation, we have and continue to believe that if we work diligently putting quality projects together, the resources will follow. While challenging, this approach has resulted in the development of several catalytic projects, both planned and realized.
One salient example this summer has been the collaboration at 1011 Market Street between TEDP, the property owner, the Luggage Store Gallery and the Northern California Community Loan Fund. The sharing of resources and expertise among this group resulted in the highly regarded SF Camerwork moving in to a long-disused space on our main commercial corridor.
Positive change happens through on-the-ground collaborations among entrepreneurial developers, property owners, business owners, creative designers, government and venture philanthropists. TEDP has had the benefit of working with such a community, among them the Rainin Foundation; Columbia Foundation; Gerbode Foundation; the Duggan Family; the Thacher Family; Grants for the Arts; Office of Economic and Workforce Development; the American Conservatory Theater; the Luggage Store Gallery; the Northern California Community Loan Fund; Group I, and Equity Community Builders. We don’t wait passively for the Request for Proposals or Notice of Funding Availability; we are innovating and rebuilding a neglected part of our city project by project, block by block.
We have been called dreamers by some. But that’s okay – in fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way. After decades of desolation and a punishing concentration of extreme poverty at the hands of formulaic developers and policy makers, a little creative thinking for equity’s sake is long overdue.
For certain, our work always results in highly technical and expensive problems to solve on the delivery end. That said, it all starts first with the imagination and the sense of the possible.
See you all at the Fringe Festival!
elvin
2010 Year in Review
2010 Year in Review, Thanks, and Looking Forward
Election 2010 Congratulations to:
Our new Tenderloin District Supervisor: Jane Kim! We congratulate Ms. Kim and look forward to working with her in the struggle for equitable development for the Tenderloin (see our editorial: “Election 2010″).
Key 2010 Events and Celebrations
Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Panel looks at 100 Taylor Street
Election 2010
November 2, 2010 – A Vote for New Leadership
This is an exciting time. National, state, and city fiscal woes notwithstanding, the Tenderloin has reason to be optimistic. After years of one-size-fits-all monolithic thinking about the needs of the neighborhood we will have new leadership in the form of a new District Supervisor. Here’s a vote for new leadership that will advocate on behalf of equitable development for the Tenderloin.
Race to the Top vs. Los Ni Ni, and how music, dance and drama education can save our kids
Los Ni Ni are everywhere. Ni estudia ni trabaja: young people who neither study nor work. Both in Latin America and in the U.S. these young people represent an endless recruitment source of cheap lives for drug traffickers. Looking at these kids one can’t help but wonder if we missed our opportunity to engage them by our ever-increasing preoccupation with test scores and need to Race to the Top. What if I’m just somewhere in the middle? Or a misfit? An outcast? Or just Different?
I remember sitting at the back of the classroom with my homeboys and feeling the awkward and very real pressure not to be into school (I was, secretly – I wanted to be a scientist.). It was part of a system that had nothing to do with us, we thought. Oye, do they really expect me to speak English like that? Race to the Top of what? A system that doesn’t look like me and has nothing to do with me? The program’s very name already has me feeling like I’m left out and behind the eight-ball.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan is handing out some really big checks. With the recent announcement of states awarded a share of the $3.4 billion in federal financing in the Race to the Top competition, the latest and greatest iteration of how we will fix our schools begins.
Secretary Duncan has spent time on some of Chicago’s toughest streets so we might expect he knows the difference between flavor-of-the-decade pedagogy and achieving real results in struggling communities like Chicago’s South Side, L.A.’s Westlake/Pico-Union, and San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Still, it’s worth remembering the fanfare surrounding the announcement of No Child Left Behind, as well as the results: drop-out rates for Latinos and African-American students hovered above 40% when the program began. Drop-out rates hovered above 40% when the program ended.
This brings to mind Ta-Nehisi Coates’ insightful account on how even bright kids can struggle in conventional classrooms. Now a successful journalist, Ta-Nehisi tries to make sense of his failure in school:
Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, says that one of the biggest barriers for kids in school is the narrow entryway to success. “You’ve generally got one shot at school,” Willingham says. “And if you’re no good at reading and arithmetic, you tune out, and school becomes a place where you’re not very happy, where you go to fail. “
The problem, Willingham argues, is that the “one shot” is tightly defined-reading in elementary school, for instance, is about pulling the main idea from stories. It’s not seen as part of social studies, the arts, or science-classes rarely taught at the elementary level. But the same basic comprehension skills come into play in those areas as well. “I tell music teachers that they need to start telling people that they’re reading teachers,” Willingham says.
Music teachers are reading teachers. This sounds a lot like what Carey Perloff, Artistic Director of American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), was describing when we met a few months ago. As I listened to Carey speak passionately about drama education I understood she was also talking about teaching youth literacy and civic values. Drama teachers are reading and civic education teachers. It occurred to me that what A.C.T.’s drama classes were offering was a broadening of the entryway to success.
Sitting in the main office at Alonzo King Lines Ballet you can’t help but notice the posters of company dancers whose bodies fall outside the conventional norm associated with ballet. When asked about it, Ann Marie Nemanich, the company’s executive director, explains a philosophy of making room for all people, not just those that meet the narrowly defined model. And when you sign-up for a dance class at Alonzo King Lines Ballet, you’re encouraged to engage in “independent thinking and problem solving.” Dance teachers are critical thinking teachers.
Moving from dance and drama to the software arts world, we have a different educational dynamic at play during one of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Creative Coding workshops, also known as Programming for Poets. Here’s a student’s review of the class:
I recently paid a visit to GAFFTA to take a class in a programming language called Processing. The language was developed in 2001 with the goal of helping artists and designers use computers to generate art, analyze data, create visuals as well as design sound and interactive experiences. Designed to make programming digital art approachable and accessible, Processing is an excellent first choice for new programmers looking to get their feet wet.
What do we make of this one? Poetry teachers are computer programming teachers? Or is it the other way around? I’m not sure (I should take the class), but designing sound and interactive experiences sounds like a sure entryway to success in our entrepreneurial apps-for iPad-economy.
Looking at A.C.T., Alonzo King Lines Ballet, and Gray Area makes a strong argument for moving past the silo approach to teaching reading and math. We can complement the classroom by supporting learning outside of the classroom: finally recognize that reading and other essential academic/life skills are integral to art programs and weave art programs into everyday life.
About a year ago a good friend helped me organize a visit to the FoxTheatre/Oakland School for the Arts development in downtown Oakland, a fantastic project that delivers both economic revitalization and educational benefits to a long-distressed part of downtown Oakland. Shortly after this fact-finding visit we learned that there was a long-term effort to move San Francisco’s highly-regarded School of the Arts (SOTA) to a downtown location. Well, I thought, why not lobby for the Tenderloin as the downtown home of SOTA? We have the real estate: hundreds of thousands of underutilized and vacant square feet within two blocks of major mass transit stations. We have a diverse and fantastic art ecosystem[1] of neighborhood galleries, theater companies, dance companies, and youth programs engaged in the arts. Our program offerings are eclectic, multi-disciplinary, and entrepreneurial.
You have to be willing to be laughed at and endure looks of incredulity when doing this kind of work, and I certainly got my share of that when I suggested we talk to the school district about building a new SOTA in the Tenderloin. But I maintain this is where SOTA belongs, and it belongs in the Mission, and in Bayview-Hunters Point. Indeed, there should be SOTAs in every community where we’re fighting to save young lives before they become our next generation of Los Ni Ni.
Someone should tell the current generation of Los Ni Ni selling crack on the corner of Turk & Taylor about Race to the Top. On the other hand maybe they already know about it and have concluded that they’ve seen it all before. If only these kids had the chance to participate in a rehearsal of an August Wilson play or study with a choreographer for an Alonzo King piece, maybe it would have worked out better for some. Maybe the difference is in how the arts give us an experiential approach to the essential learning Professor Willingham was talking about. Maybe it’s a simple matter of offering a different, and arguably far more inclusive, path to learning and success. Sitting behind a desk almost all day, every day, maintaining focus and staying on task for years doesn’t work for a lot of our students (I still can’t do it!). Many of us are just wired differently.
Duncan and Obama and all of us are in a serious competition with the streets, and Race to the Top seems like more of the same that results in almost half of our inner-city kids dropping-out. I’m not arguing that music, dance and drama classes are going to save all the kids on the corner of Turk & Taylor, but if we break outside the confines of the school walls, develop collaborations with our school districts and invest in the A.C.T.s, Alonzo Kings and Gray Areas out there I bet we could reach many more of them.
We have to inspire them.
Cheers,
Elvin
Addendum: There are numerous and wonderful examples of the arts inspiring/educating/rescuing at-risk young people in distressed communities all over the world – the most famous, El Sistema in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela, inspired me to think about a SOTA in the Tenderloin. There’s also El Colegio del Cuerpo (dance) in Cartagena, Columbia and al-Kamandjati (music) in Palestine. Here in the states there’s Bill Strickland’s brilliant Manchester Craftsmans’ Guild in Pittsburgh. In Los Angeles there’s Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, where kids who would otherwise drop-out of school remain engaged through music and poetry. Check out the Shop Girls, Las Artes and other fantastic programs offered by ISDA in the Sonoran Desert. And in the Tenderloin we are fortunate to have Roaddawgz, the Boys & Girls Club, the Vietnamese Youth Development Center, and the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA.
[1] The wonderful art ecosystem metaphor courtesy of (my back of the classroom homeboy) Darryl Smith of the Luggage Store Gallery.
A letter to Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
Dear Rocco:
It was great to meet you during your recent San Francisco tour. A few weeks after your visit I was invited to meet with the Arts Loan Fund to discuss the development of an arts & culture district in the Tenderloin along mid-Market. I thought you might find interesting our discussion about the opportunities and challenges our community faces in this effort.
A principal challenge is a difficult real estate landscape, both housing and commercial. Many local tourist hotel rooms have been converted to permanent residential rooms, robbing local small businesses like Original Joe’s and the EXIT Theatre of an important source of customers and income. We now have a high-concentration of substandard rooms in shabby buildings bordering on the main commercial thoroughfare – a critical problem that we as a city have to address if we want to achieve both business development and dignified housing for low-income residents. (By the way, I hope you are successful in convincing Shaun Donovan and HUD to leverage NEA investments; at present there is no HUD program comparable to their Choice Neighborhoods Initiative to help communities like the Tenderloin where sub-standard housing is in private hands.)
We are also losing parking spaces, causing us to lose customers to other parts of town or cities where they can park their cars. One new development, CityPlace, will restore some of these lost spaces and support existing and new local businesses in the process.
On the commercial front the big disadvantages are land costs and lack of site control, i.e. real estate ownership is in the hands of a hodge-podge of private interests, much of which has been disinterested and/or absentee. But there’s some exciting news to report: the Tenderloin Economic Development Project is proceeding with feasibility studies on several distressed properties with major frontage along Market Street for an arts-based development that could encompass new dance, theater and education facilities. The studies and eventual development will be done in concert with respected San Francisco art & culture organizations. The opportunity to revitalize these properties represents the best chance the San Francisco art & culture community, philanthropy, city and the Tenderloin have had in decades to be in the driver’s seat and deliver a catalytic project with economic development and civic benefits. Stay tuned in the months ahead for further updates.
I don’t have to tell you another major challenge is the current financial state of the public and private sectors. But here also there’s encouraging news to report. The city is working to organize a mid-Market redevelopment plan that can generate significant resources for local projects. Mayor Newsom himself promised to make the revitalization of mid-Market a priority during the remainder of his term.
And then there’s your NEA Mayor’s Institute on City Design Anniversary Initiative, a great opportunity to light a catalytic match and invest in long-term outcomes for the revitalization of the area. Long-term investments are often sacrificed in favor of short-term politically-inspired calendars that favor easy, quick victories and press releases. I hope you and the NEA decide to invest in San Francisco, and that San Francisco decides to invest in the Tenderloin’s economic development for the long-haul.
To give you a couple of examples of long-term investments, a collaboration between the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and Grants for the Arts is making possible new ventures that will revitalize dormant commercial properties while supporting established San Francisco art organizations and property owners. Gallery CAP is moving into the Luggage Store Gallery’s ground floor space, the EXIT Theatre is expanding and creating its 5th off-off Broadway theater venue, and the Boxcar Theater is moving into couture designer Lily Samii’s ground floor space. Foul Play Productions is developing their business plan to resurrect the historic Gaiety Theatre. The Northern California Community Loan Fund has been instrumental with the planning for each of these projects
These investments have created a sense of momentum. The owners of long underutilized properties like the Market Street Cinema and the Strand Theater have taken notice; they’ve recently contacted the city expressing interest in re-purposing their properties. Even the Shorenstein Company, which owns the crown jewel Golden Gate Theater, is getting into the act and moving forward on feasibility studies for the 40,000 square feet of dormant commercial space above the theater. The reactivating of this space will be an enormous boost for the Tenderloin’s economy.
You probably saw the NY Times article In Broadway Lights: No Vacancy in the Sunday paper on May 2nd. It highlighted the efforts producers make to find a venue on 44th or 45th street because of “the old tradition of people walking from theater to theater to theater on those crowded streets at 7:30 p.m. asking the box offices, ‘Do you have any tickets left?’” This is precisely our goal in the Tenderloin and along mid-Market, foot traffic that generates business for the area.
Speaking of foot traffic, did you know that the hit show “Wicked” at the Orpheum brings 15,000 people each week to the Tenderloin? We have to do a much better job at extracting local economic benefits from this amazing number, an analysis I like to call “Wickednomics.” Indeed, I believe we are nowhere near capturing the potential out there because of our undeveloped market, and when the Tenderloin/mid-Market comes to life it will help stimulate all the rest of San Francisco’s economy.
That’s all for now. Let me know when you’re next in town; I’d be happy to take you to Frankie’s place at Turk & Taylor. There you’ll meet many old stage-hands, set builders, costume makers, musicians, cab drivers, and bartenders who used to work the Tenderloin venues back when the place was jumping. They’ll tell you that you’re right – Art Works, and work is what we’re after.
And we’ll raise a toast to Brother Quentin Easter and all the spirits he and Stanley have raised in their years working together.
Cheers,
Elvin
The School of X and the Tenderloin Arts Advisory Group
The School of X and the Tenderloin Arts Advisory Group
The School of X
A few weeks ago the San Francisco Foundation[1] and Grants for the Arts hosted a wonderful conference: Dynamic Adaptability – A Conference on New Thinking and New Strategies for the Arts. There were many notable speakers; one in particular had the attendees talking about his keynote long after he left the stage.
Jonah Lehrer is a neuroscientist, author, and currently a contributing editor at Wired. Among the fascinating anecdotes he shared with the audience was an account of two groups trying to solve a lab problem involving E. coli proteins. One group, (Group A) was composed exclusively by E. coli experts; the other group (Group B) was comprised of biochemists, molecular biologists, geneticists and medical school students.
Lehrer described how the E. coli experts took a brute-force approach to the problem, which took them several weeks to resolve. The multi-disciplinary group, by contrast, solved the problem in 10 minutes. According to Lehrer, members the multi-disciplinary group were forced to communicate through metaphor and analogies that resulted in assumptions being challenged and new ideas to surface.
Visiting Lehrer’s blog to learn more, he summarizes the E. coli lesson as follows:
Having to explain the problem to someone else forced them to think, if only for a moment, like an intellectual on the margins, filled with self-skepticism.
The lesson is that the process of discovery benefits from our differences, from the disagreements and contradictions that arise when people with different assumptions discuss the same data. When everyone agrees, or has the same academic background, then the stubbornness is reinforced. The theory doesn’t change. The School of X – and it doesn’t matter what X is – remains tethered to its dusty preconceptions. The failure never leads to a better answer.
Convergence & the Tenderloin Arts Advisory Group
At last fall’s meeting at the Luggage Store Gallery we began to see the adoption of Group B’s approach. Economic development staff, art organizations, developers, entrepreneurs, property owners, and financing experts all converged to compare notes and ideas on the goal of revitalizing the Tenderloin and mid-Market area. Since that meeting we have seen a greater degree of collaboration between city hall, property owners and nonprofit experts in all of these disciplines.
And then there’s the Tenderloin Arts Advisory Group which provides valuable feedback and suggestions to TEDP to help guide its work. The group is comprised of affordable housing developers, social service agencies, youth organizations, the community benefits district, and, yes, art organizations! Over the past year the group has moved beyond simplistic perspectives (Slum Lords! Poverty Pimps! Gentrifying artists! Anti-poor people capitalists! Etc.) and in the process discovered a common interest in serving the community.
Differences remain of course, and the arts have given us a valuable mechanism to explore them. But we are beginning to recognize the Tenderloin is in many respects a manifestation of Group A’s approach. Attempts to solve the community’s problems via any one discipline – affordable housing, social service programs – have failed. And it is probably safe to assume that any new attempt to solve the community’s problem by a blunt-force approach to economic development will likewise also fail.
We have high hopes that through sharing our differences, disagreements and contradictions we can make progress toward making the Tenderloin a vibrant and livable community, even if it will take us longer than 10 minutes.
Cheers,
Elvin
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[1] TEDP is fortunate to receive support from the SF Foundation.
Letter from the Executive Director – Fall 2009
IBM, New York City politics, and a new Tenderloin economy beginning on October 21st
Perhaps by now we’ve all seen the IBM “Smarter Planet” ad campaign. “New York has smart crime fighting”, so the ad goes. Problem with traffic? Software is the solution. Global warming? Dysfunctional health care system? Better software is our answer.
Wow. Could IBM’s algorithms revitalize the Tenderloin?
The technological approach to solving civic problems brings to mind a recent book signing hosted by the Luggage Store Gallery (http://www.luggagestoregallery.org/). In his excellent book, City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics, Brooklyn College Professor Alex Vitale analyzes the evolution of New York City’s urban social and economic policy from the 1960s through the neoconservative triumph of the Guiliani Administration.
There are two parts to Vitale’s principal argument. First, the economic and housing policies which emphasized and heavily subsidized the high-wage economy sectors (think Wall Street) resulted in a dramatic polarization of the city’s population into relatively few, very wealthy beneficiaries and more – many more – low-income individuals and families severely marginalized by the economic and housing shifts. Second, the swelled ranks of the disenfranchised ultimately gave rise to public disorder, “quality of life” problems that eventually resulted in desperate urban liberals calling for more policing.
This is where better living through better software enters the picture. The development and use of the famous CompStat crime-fighting computer program has been heralded a technological solution to a problem, Vitale might argue, created by destructive and inequitable economic/housing development policies.
Most striking in Vitale’s account is the staggering number of low-skilled, livable wage jobs lost over the 1970s: 38 million. In response our political leaders began their calls for retraining factory workers losing their jobs so they could compete in the new global economy (from machine tool operator to hedge fund analyst in three easy steps).
The Tenderloin has yet to reap the benefits of the hedge fund economy, but now we’re told we can look to IBM to lead us to the Promised Land. While we’re waiting for a new and improved CompStat to solve our problems by offering an even more efficient way to digitally track society’s growing number of losers, let’s get ready for a great event scheduled for October 21st, once again at the Luggage Store.
Rebuilding a vibrant Local Economy: Arts & Culture Development meet Real Estate Development
On October 21st, at the intersection of four major city thoroughfares, across the street from two of the city’s grand theater and music venues, at the mid-point between two heavily-used public transit stations (you get the idea – lots of people!), the Tenderloin Economic Development Project and Fair Market Properties will host a gathering of accomplished Bay Area art & culture organization representatives and begin a collaboration with property owners, CBOs, nonprofit finance agencies, government and foundation officers toward the goal of finding a home for them in the community.
This is all in the interest of building a thriving local economy through investing in real assets: shuttered grand movie houses, art venues, and idle human capital. We know from experience and research that where the theater, music and dance organizations lead, the restaurants (Original Joe’s?), cafes, filled taxi cabs and hotel rooms will follow. All these activities create jobs and attract dollars spent in the neighborhood. Each time the curtain goes up at the Golden Gate Theatre, a steady parade of theater patrons can be seen streaming down Taylor Street from Union Square and Nob Hill. This traffic and the business it stimulates highlight the importance of mid-Market viability to the Tenderloin, and on October 21st we will begin working to attract the organizations that can help increase it. (For a comprehensive and compelling report on the economic impact of nonprofit arts and culture organizations, visit: http://www.artsusa.org/.)
San Francisco is a hospitality industry town. Given this reality we will compete for art & culture organizations that can help us benefit locally from the larger economy. Compared to its neighbors – Van Ness with the symphony and opera, Yerba Buena with its great museums, Union Square with its mainstream theater – the Tenderloin and mid-Market area are in a unique position to expand on what’s already the most diverse and eclectic range of art & culture venues and offerings in all of San Francisco. Where else in the city can you see a Broadway show at a 2400 seat art-deco palace (Golden Gate Theatre) and then head to an off-Broadway show at a 50 seat black box space (EXIT Theatre) within two blocks of each other?
This initiative will be challenging for any number of reasons, but the timing is right, the collaboration is the multi-talented, multi-resourceful, improvisational ensemble necessary to take it on, and with a focused, concerted, sustained effort we can succeed.
Here’s to a new collaboration and the rebuilding of a great, local, arts-based economy – more business for the Tenderloin, less need for CompStat.
Cheers!
Elvin