My dog Belle loves Cottage Street Studios in Easthampton. She charges up 51 steps to the third floor. High ceilings; very tall stairways. Belle knows to stand away from the ancient manually operated freight elevator door; scary and potentially dangerous. Belle loves to run down the hallways. She doesn’t know the sound of her 16-pound bounding body can be heard on the lower floor and adjacent studios. Belle is nearly deaf so doesn’t hear conversations in spaces beside, above and below us.
Belle doesn’t know I bring her drinking water from home. The plumbing pipes are very old … who knows. Belle does wonder why her water bowl is only 1/4 full. She doesn’t realize spilt water leaks through the floor and pours onto stuff below. Wintertime temperatures are a problem for Belle. The single pipe heating system renders our studio 75 – 80-plus degrees.
Artists are like dogs; they manage. Artists occupy buildings no other tenants typically will. Artists don’t ask a lot except that ancient elevators work on a reasonably regular basis, understand when they don’t — in exchange pay lower rents. Like a good dog, art businesses stay put. Generally stay for years and decades.
Commercial and industrial buildings are valued based on rental income and expenses required to operate a building. The third and equally important variable often overlooked is “lost income”; primarily rent not collected on vacant space. Buildings occupied by artists very rarely have vacancies or lost income. Rather there is a waiting list.
At some point high rates of occupancy offset lower rental rates. Think about the value of a tenant who stays for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years in a substandard building. Belle, needless to say won’t.
Katherine Ahern
Easthampton