Urban buy

Forces are gathering to make live/work space for artists a reality, and they've got their sights set on the Nissen building

by Sam Pfeifle

WORKING FOR A LIVING: Rose Marasco and Jessica Tomlinson are spearheading an effort to provide affordable housing for Portland artists.

Standing inside the Nissen building on Washington Avenue in Portland, some visitors might have to use their imaginations, maybe squint their eyes a little, to picture the place as anything but an industrial shell. The floors are caked with the grime of dust and moisture. Old conveyor belts stand in pieces around nondescript machinery. The windows 10 feet overhead are the frosted kind you find only in bathrooms and factories, and little natural light gets through. All around, drips, creaks, groans, and skitters wiggle in between echoes of conversation.

"Dangerous isn't the word," says Tony McDonald, a representative of the Boulos Company, which manages the property for owners A & M Associates. "But be careful."

Luckily for struggling artists in town, Rose Marasco and Jessica Tomlinson, with the help of city planner Alan Holt and a host of other interested parties, have plenty of imagination, and they are looking at the old but very sturdy space as a possible artistic haven of living spaces, studios, galleries, and performance theaters.

As the Phoenix first reported in June, about a dozen artists led by Marasco, with help from Holt, have been meeting every month in hopes of establishing a live/work space for the city's artists currently being forced out of Portland by escalating real-estate prices. The effort sprouted from a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance during something they called their Arts Resource Day in May, convened to identify the needs of Portland artists. Tomlinson, who had begun a similar effort of her own, recently joined forces with Marasco and the others.

But Tomlinson may in fact have more experience with the endeavor than the others. This former gallery owner got her introduction to Portland's live/work effort five years ago, when the city began the process which would result in the designation of the Arts District -- an area less and less welcoming to artists.

At that time Tomlinson was running the Dead Space Gallery behind Joe's Smoke Shop, and when the city hired two consultants to offer advice on an arts district, Tomlison acted as an intermediary between the city and its artists.

"I was really vocal and pushy back then," she says. "I met with Maine State Housing, went to Boston to meet with Jero Nesson," who wrote Artists in Space, the handbook on setting up artist live/work space. "The city spent their infamous $50,000 on hiring consultants," she says, trying not to sound bitter, "and we had a big meeting at the gallery and it didn't get a lot of support. The city was interested but thought it was too preliminary, and I think it probably was."

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At the time, reasons Tomlinson, the real estate crunch had yet to hit, and it was hard to envision rents increasing as they have. "The State Theater building, for instance," she says, "the rent has doubled in the past five years. People are moving out of town: to the Bridge Street Building in Westbrook, to South Portland, to Biddeford because it's cheaper. I've noticed people getting bounced from the Danforth building, like [Glatter J. Books]. There's getting to be fewer and fewer options."

Language was included in the Arts District plan endorsing the concept of live/work space, but nothing substantive ever came of it.

"I think it would be really naïve to think that the city would make affordable housing for artists a top priority," says Tomlinson. "I'm not trying to right past wrongs at this point, I'm just picking up where I thought somebody else would have."

Now, through a chance encounter with Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance's Deb Krichels while getting coffee at the Center for Cultural Exchange, Tomlinson has hooked up with Marasco. "I was just chatting with her, and I told her that I was still working toward live/work space," says Tomlinson. "And Deb said, `Call Rose Marasco right now.' "

Marasco, a professor at USM, caught the live/work bug earlier this year, when she was considering buying a home on Spring Street. At the same time she was thinking to herself about giving something back to the city, leaving something in her will, perhaps, that could benefit artist in Portland.

"I was in the top floor of this house and looked out the window onto the Portland Museum of Art," she remembers. "And I thought to myself, This is what I could leave, a place where artists could live and work."

Her determination was solidified when she attended PACA's Resource Day.

Marasco and Tomlinson are working together now, and though they may have differing opinions on what the final live/work product will look like, both are committed to acquiring affordable housing and keeping Portland's artists in Portland. Tomlinson has quit her job of five years as the Portland Press Herald's community outreach coordinator, to dedicate more time to the effort. They both feel too much time has passed already for Portland artists.

"There are only a handful of studios left around Congress Street," says Marasco. "We feel really vulnerable right now. We're about two studios away from being gone."

At the Nissen building, it's clear the Resource Day had an impact. Visual artist Vivien Russe was in attendance at the Resource Day, listening to Holt, Marasco, St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center head Bill Milliken, and others wrangle over what exactly Portland artists want, need, and can actually accomplish. Standing out in front of Nissen, however, Russe just wants a little stability in her life. "I live in Yarmouth, but my studio is in Portland," she says. "I'm here [today] because I'd like to know where my studio will be in five years." Her space has been bought out from under her twice in the past five years, yet another example of the increasing value of downtown Portland real estate. That same Portland real estate, surrounding such cultural hubs as the Portland Museum of Art, the Maine College of Art, and more galleries than you can count on two hands, that is forcing out the Maine artists that helped revitalize the area.

Tomlinson is a self-starter, though she wishes she would have connected with Marasco in time for the Resource Day. Along with scouting out locations, she is in the final stages of acquiring 501(c)(3) status for the Portland Artists' Dwellings and Studios, or PADS, the future nonprofit that will allow the live/work effort to secure grants and, hopefully, property-tax exempt status with the city.

"That's a touchy thing with the city," she says, recalling the request by city manager Bob Ganley earlier this year for tax-exempt facilities to fork over a little cash. "We may even be uttering that dirty three-letter word `TIF.' "

But if the city is willing to fork over $400,000 to the developers of the proposed apartment building on Munjoy Hill, she reasons, they ought to see the value in establishing affordable housing through Tomlinson's nonprofit.

"The idea of this nonprofit is to secure affordable live/work space for Portland artists in a building owned by the nonprofit," says Tomlinson. "Rose is more about the big building; I'm more interested in the smaller chunks myself." Specifically, she'd like to start with three- and four-bedroom apartments, or other similarly sized space, possibly in the Bayside area. With renovation, she envisions buildings with as few as two tenants, each with a living space and studio. The nonprofit "would become a very civic and benevolent landlord," she says.

But making the space affordable is dependent in many ways on the city.

"Say a building costs $150,000, and you have two 2000 foot studios in 4000 feet of space," Tomlinson postulates. "You're going to be paying $300 a month in taxes, which is an extra $150 per studio." With a tax break, that money disappears, the nonprofit could more than cover a building's mortgage, and the rents could be considerably lower than the current going rate.

"That's how you get affordable housing," says Tomlinson.

Marasco and others on the Nissen building tour are thinking considerably bigger. Nissen has two floors of about 50,000 square feet each, with a penthouse third floor at a not-too-shabby 35,000 square feet. With another 6000 feet of nooks and crannies, the place can seem like a wonderland of opportunities for use.

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Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com.