bringing back bell - artspace preservation in print • april 2013 bringing back bell the $38...

20 Preservation in Print • aPriL 2013 www.Prcno.org

Bringing Back Bell

The $38 million redevelopment of Tremé’s Andrew J. Bell School into affordable artist housing and work space by a unique de-veloper with community part-ners is a powerful symbol of neighborhood changes to come.

By Danielle Del Sol

PhotographY by James Shaw

2013 aPriL • Preservation in Print 21www.Prcno.org

HEY MAY NOT KNOW ITS NAME, but people know the imposing silhouette of the An-drew J. Bell Junior High School. Driving on Interstate 10 through New Orleans, it’s hard to miss. The hulking Gothic brick and stone landmark commands attention, its repeating roofline crosses seemingly sanctifying the blue, black and white graffiti tags that mar the walls below. The building has sat empty for seven years now, with warped wood planks covering many of its windows and serpentine vines slithering through cracks in the mortar — yet, still, its Gothic grandeur endures. Those who do know the name Andrew J. Bell might remember its long-celebrated reputation as home to one of the best middle school marching bands in the city. Several members of the Grammy award-winning Rebirth Brass Band learned their skills from the schools’ inspirational music instruc-tors; the impact of teachers like Danny Barker and Donald Richardson on the lives of students in Tremé served, for decades, as a vital part of the storied and living history of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhood, one that has always been defined by cultural richness.

Drive by the school today and the structure, though languishing, seems impressively intact. But its stately features belie the damage within. Though in the midst of hurricane season, roofers had begun scheduled summer repairs in the weeks before Hurri-cane Katrina that included ripping the terra cotta tiles off the school’s roof. When the storm hit on August 29, only plywood and paper were left to shield the top floor’s classrooms and offices from the deluge. Over an inch of rain fell per hour throughout the day. Despite the steady streams saturating the walls, stripping the paint and scattering furniture, paper and supplies inside the school, the structure stood strong. Bell Junior High survived the storm, and Tremé was largely spared from major flooding. With its students and faculty displaced, though, the build-ing sat empty. As other neighborhoods throughout the city began to rebuild and revitalize, the section of Tremé surrounding the school continued to decline, as did the Bell campus itself. “The Bell School site in its entirety represented a cultural crossroads, a connector, and that story spanned from the 1870s” — when the sisters bought and first occupied the block — “until August 2005,” Butler said. “And then it just went dead — stone cold quiet. The building was not actually destroyed by the storm, but instead by the seven years of abject neglect that it faced while unoccupied.”

The Bell School began life in 1904 as the all-girls St. Joseph Academy High School and Sisters of St. Joseph Convent, designed by Owen and Diboll, ar-chitects. The sisters had occupied the site, bound by North Galvez Street, Ursulines Avenue, North John-son and St. Philip streets for decades; still standing in front of the school building today is a Gothic chapel commissioned by the sisters in 1887 and de-signed by James Freret. The order moved to a new location in 1960 and sold the city block and all its buildings — today there are five — to the Orleans Parish School Board. Though Bell Junior High, like the neighborhood surrounding it, fell into disrepair in the following de-cades, it was still a vibrant cultural and educational hub for the community until 2005. The school’s va-cancy since Hurricane Katrina has been an abysmal addition to the neighborhood’s landscape — one pocked with blight, in an area lakeside of Claiborne Avenue that has long struggled with economic disin-vestment. The school should have been repaired after the storm, said Joe Butler, local project manager for the nonprofit developer Artspace. Its abandonment, he said, “represents a real tragedy in terms of respon-sibility of the stewardship by the public sector.”

PROJECT DOssiERWHAT: redevelopment of andrew J. Bell Middle school into affordable artist housing and program-ming spaceWHERE: 1010 n. galvez st.WHEN: construction began october 2012DEVELOPER: artspaceCOST: $28 million (Phase i; Phase 2 will cost an ad-ditional $10 million)SQUARE FOOTAGE: 148,000 over two city blocksARCHITECT: Billes PartnersDEVELOPMENT PARTNER: Providence community Housing

TA classroom inside Bell Junior High as it looked in late 2009.


With the Recovery School District (which took control of the site from the Orleans Parish School Board after Katrina) having given up hope of ever reoccupying the school, the building’s costly repair and reuse seemed pie-in-the-sky. Residents won-dered who would ever take on a restoration of this size, scope and level of complication.

The answer came in the form of a Minneapolis-based non-profit developer that unites the resources of city, neighborhood and philanthropic entities to make complex projects possible. Artspace creates, owns and operates affordable spaces for artists and creative businesses across the country, and their projects usually involve the adaptive reuse of histor-ic buildings. Their rehabilitation of the Bell School site — construction broke ground in October 2012 — is no exception. The school itself and adjacent buildings, including the former Ben Franklin El-ementary School building fronting North Johnson Street — 148,000 square feet total across two whole city blocks — will be adapted by Artspace into a community art hub that will include 73 units of af-fordable live/work units for artists and their fami-lies, affordable offices and facilities for nonprofit or-ganizations, on-site restoration opportunities and a permanent home for a fledgling architectural crafts guild, 45,000 square feet of community green space, open exhibit areas and more. Artspace is partner-ing with stakeholders locally and nationally to fund the $38 million project and to ensure its success and longevity within this historic neighborhood.

“This formerly gorgeous building is one of New Orleans’ gems, and we needed a building that was interesting enough, visible enough, important enough, sexy enough to convince both local and national investors from the philanthropic com-munity that this was the site,” Butler said. “Plus, the Laffite Corridor, the new Wheatley School — there is $400 to $500 million in investment within six surrounding blocks. That helped [this project] write its own future — now the Andrew J. Bell School will be restored as a hub for culture in Tremé.”

S A NOT-FOR-PROFIT real estate developer, Artspace has an unusually altruistic claim: “As a mission-driven organization we have absolutely, positively no vested interest in putting our profit be-fore any of the interests of our constituency,” who are artists and cultural workers, said Shawn McLearen, director of properties. Artspace exists to keep afford-able spaces available in revitalizing areas for artists to live and work— units at the Bell School site will rent for prices affordable to those who make 30 to 60 per-cent of the average median income — and for arts-driven businesses and non-profits to have offices. It’s a well-known phenomenon that artists seeking cheap, interesting spaces will often set up stu-dios in disinvested areas and, by virtue of living there and reintroducing art and culture, make these neighborhoods hip. This makes the area more desirable to outsiders; real estate prices climb, the area begins to flourish economically and the artists are no longer able to af-ford rising rents. Artspace was born three decades ago as “a person basically in a chair with a phone taking calls from artists trying to find a more affordable place to live when they were getting priced out of the apartments they were in,” said Bill Mague, vice president for asset manage-ment. The nonprofit arts organization’s board decided, after some time of essen-tially existing as a housing service con-necting artists to landlords, to develop its own affordable housing and work spaces for artists. Today, Mague said, it has completed and operates 32 sites in 14 states and has another 15 projects in the pipeline. Their projects are usually mixed-use, combining affordable hous-ing, studio space, community gathering areas and offices in one building or site.

The nonprofit doesn’t participate in specula-tion — all of their projects are born from an invita-tion, Mague said. After being invited by city of-ficials or an organization to explore the possibility of developing affordable artist space in their city or on their specific site, a team of Artspace analysts will spend days touring the possible project and speaking to community members. The analysts employ specific real estate tools to measure feasibil-ity — what tax incentives and funding sources are immediately available is a primary consideration — and engage civic leaders to learn of tangential needs and interests surrounding the site and its neighbor-

hood. While Artspace’s agenda focuses on main-taining affordability for artists, it is able to complete projects only by partnering with other organizations and, in exchange for a buy-in, incorporating ways to realize their partners’ goals as well. These partners may be city agencies looking to promote community development or smart growth, nonprofits working for environmentalism or philanthropists passionate about historic preservation, to name a few examples. “Everyone brings something to the table and that

AThe circa 1887 Gothic Chapel that sits in front of the former Andrew J. Bell Junior High School.


Story and map by Karen Armagost

NORTH CLAIbORNE AVENUE in New Orleans’ Tremé and Seventh Ward neighborhoods, between Canal Street and St. Bernard Avenue, was once a lively heart of African-American life in New Orleans. The wide neutral ground, which was an inviting and well-used social space, is now covered by a highway overpass and the live oaks that once stood there have been replaced by concrete piers. The sidewalks, which were once filled with pedestrians walking to visit neighbors and businesses, are now largely unused. As HUD, the Department of Transportation and the City of New Orleans continue to research the potential impacts of removing the I-10 overpass with the Livable Claiborne Communities Revitalization Study, it is helpful to look at the history of this corridor to understand how it once flourished. The 1938 Polk’s New Orleans City Directory contains the first reverse look-up listings, which record names in ad-dress order. The second directory, 1965, also contains a reverse listing and reflects data compiled dur-ing one of the final years before the oaks on Claiborne were cut down and construction began on the highway. By comparing the two, the most striking information revealed is that, while Claiborne Avenue is widely discussed as a former “thriving commercial corridor,” it was a truly mixed-use street filled not only with a variety of businesses but also many homes. Nearly every block along this corridor contained both residential and business listings. This diversity is reflective of a neighborhood where people gener-ally lived, walked, worked and shopped close to home. In discussions with residents of Tremé who lived in the area before the I-10 overpass was built, people frequently cite the corridor’s heavy pedestrian use as its former defining characteristic. Additionally, these directories show that, in the years from 1938 to 1965, the stretch of Claiborne Av-enue in the Sixth and Seventh wards was remarkably stable. In 1938 there were 348 addresses listed between Canal and St. Bernard Avenues. This number increased to 376 addresses in 1965. In both years, 53 percent of the addresses were residences and 35 percent were businesses. The biggest shift was in the size of the business: mid-size businesses constituted 57 percent of all business listings in 1938, but that percentage had increased to 89 percent by 1965. This represented a shift of business owners such as dress makers, clothes pressers, shoe repairers and food vendors, transitioning from working out of their homes to opening store-front operations. More than the numbers were stable — at least 11 busi-nesses, including Heckmann’s Shoe Store, Claiborne Hardware, the LaBranche Pharmacy and Gus Betat & Son Bicycles were open for business through the nearly three decades examined in these directories. Physically, North Claiborne Avenue is much altered when compared with 1939 Sanborn Maps. Be-tween Canal Street and St. Bernard Avenue, approximately 50 houses have been lost. In some cases entire blocks were torn down in order to build on- and off-ramps for the I-10 overpass. What might be more surprising, however, is that there are approximately 50 buildings that were on the 1939 map that are still standing, though in various states. There is still more that needs to be researched: Were these businesses sustained by foot or auto-mobile traffic, for example? And what really caused so many businesses to fail in the years following the overpass’ construction? Was the structure itself, in reality, solely to blame? Or was it a more complicated mix of causes, including desegregation of the Canal Street shopping area, and the movement of people, both white and black, to suburban neighborhoods? As the study progresses, understanding what made Claiborne Avenue success-ful in the past could help make it a more inviting place in the future.

Then & Now: Claiborne Avenue

makes for a more sustainable project because more people have something invested in the project’s success,” But-ler said.

It’s a methodology that lets everyone win: Artspace is able to fund their proj-ects, and communities are served more holistically. “We use real estate as a tool for community development, and we spend a lot of time having to explain that,” Mague said.

“I argue that we are the only kind of real estate model that could make [a project as complex as the Bell School site redevelopment] work,” McLearen said. “Without having all those stake-holders at the table, there is no way a building like that, real estate-wise, would pencil out.”

McLearen is currently oversee-ing the adaptive reuse of a five-story former public school in East Harlem and uses that $52 million project to illustrate his point. The building sat empty for a decade, he said, because no developer could make its redevelop-ment profitable without tearing down the historic school and replacing it with cheap new construction or adapt-ing the circa 1898 building into luxury condos. But the community wouldn’t allow either option: Its significance to community leaders protected PS 109 from demolition, and the need for affordable housing in the neighbor-hood meant condos were out. “Time and again you see this myopic view of, ‘let’s do one policy agenda,’” he said. By blending their own affordable housing and arts mission with organizations that promoted preservation and com-munity development, Artspace won the approval of the residents to adapt PS 109. “Community leadership in the El Barrio neighborhood saw real opportunity in a developer that could step up and say, ‘we can bring these additional pieces to the table as well.’” (Visit our blog at blog.prcno.org to read more about Artspace’s El Barrio project.)

Each project’s financial feasibility equation is different, as every project has its own assets and unique group of partners. Tax credits always play a critical role in funding Artspace de-velopments, however, and as many as can be utilized in a particular state for a project will be tapped. Artspace’s first-ever project, the adaptation of a six-story, circa 1908 warehouse in St. Paul, Minn.into the Northern Warehouse Artists’ Cooperative in 1989, was one of the first projects in the country to utilize the federal Low Income Hous-ing Tax Credit, according to Mague. Artspace has used these tax credits in as many projects as possible since. His-toric rehabilitation tax credits, com-

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munity development block grants and new markets tax credits are also often utilized, as are other state and federal housing tax credits and municipal ap-propriations.

The same federal tax credits will be utilized in the Bell School project, as will Louisiana’s state historic tax rehabilitation credit. Capital from philanthropic sources include over $1.5 million from the Ford Foundation (including $500,000 for early plan-ning and engagement work), a $400,000 grant from ArtPlace, $150,000 from the Greater New Orleans Foundation and $50,000 from JPMorgan Chase.

While the rest of the budget’s funding is unclear, according to Artspace’s website the Bell School proj-ect is currently about $6 million short of its fund-ing goal — the hope is for an additional $4 million from the state, and $1.5 million from private donors. Neighborhood leaders are nonetheless optimistic that the project will come through, regardless, and have lasting impact. “Artspace brings the experience and proven track record needed to tackle a challenging rehabilitation project like this,” said Terri North, pres-ident and CEO of Providence Community Housing, developers of the mixed-income Lafitte housing de-velopment nearby. As a partner, Providence has con-tributed $2 million to Bell School’s redevelopment. “With Providence working throughout the area, we believe the Bell School site is a key anchor site that could spur significant redevelopment all around it, complementing our other work in the area,” North said. “Tremé is a neighborhood rich in history, tradi-tion, art and culture. We know we can trust Artspace to approach this rehabilitation in a way that remains

true to the neighborhood to which it belongs.”

RTSPACE HAD BEEN poking around New Orleans for years, even pre-Katrina — but the redevelopment of the Iberville project was the real impetus for the City of New Orleans to get serious about supporting an Artspace de-velopment here, and for the nonprofit to find a site and commit. “When the city and the Housing Authority of New Orleans started to think about the Iberville redevel-opment and got involved in the very competitive Choice Neighborhoods Federal Ini-tiative program, they wanted to have a portfolio of housing that offered more than just traditional housing,” Butler said. “That’s when we started taking our work with the city up to another level.” That was in 2009. Artspace spent three years developing the project and talking with Tremé residents and organi-zations. “We feel really fortu-nate to have been challenged, pushed and ultimately em-braced by the neighbors and

the surrounding organizations that have for years done a lot of work there, people who had good ques-tions about the legitimacy of what we were doing and what our plans were,” Butler said. “It has been three years in the making to have folks feel comfortable with each other.” Artspace’s teams are committed to earning the approval of residents and collaborating with neighborhood entities in Tremé and in all their projects, Butler said, because if there’s not communi-ty buy-in, it doesn’t matter how much financial sense a project may make — it will fail. Butler would know — he is a New Orleans native himself, and has done work in community planning within the city for years (in addition to seven years of similar work in South Africa). Though he’s now based in Minneapolis, Mague is also a native — he and Butler were friends growing up, attending New Orleans’ public schools — and both are proud of the way Artspace has made reaching out to Tremé’s residents a priority. Butler has partnered closely with Tremé4Tremé, a consortium of neighborhood non-profits, business owners and individual residents that is, according to its president Cyril Saulny, a Tremé or-ganization that wrote, last year, a community-based strategic plan. Saulny has lived in the neighborhood his entire life and attended Bell Junior High. “A place like Artspace can really anchor the community,” he said recently. “But the neighborhood is the silent ma-jority. They’re observing what’s going on, and they’re going to be diligent in overseeing the development of Bell School. They want to know how they fit in. But-ler’s willingness to embrace the community has been impressive.” Saulny cited the resident selection pro-

cess as particularly inclusive of neighbors: Artspace will establish a board that includes Tremé residents to decide who actually gets to rent Bell’s affordable units. “The people who get to live there will be de-cided in part by neighborhood residents, and then programming in the non-residential parts of the site will benefit the community. By incorporating the actual culture that already exists here, Artspace can only enhance arts and culture,” Saulny said. Other partners, like those within New Orleans’ city government — in the mayor’s office and depart-ments like housing and community development and HANO — and in the New City Partnership have been crucial collaborators from the start, Butler said. Community stalwarts like the leaders at St. Peter Claver Church have kept dialogue about the project alive amongst the neighborhood’s residents. And or-ganizations with specific needs, such as the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, have also considered part-nering with Artspace to utilize the affordable rental space that will be available to arts groups. The New Orleans Master Crafts Guild, led by Jonn Hankins, which seeks to revive the city’s traditional building trades by placing carpenters, plasterers, metalwork-ers and others as apprentices with craftsmen whose families have plied their trade in New Orleans for many generations, will hopefully also partner with Artspace to restore the chapel next to the Bell School as part of its programming. “If we preserve this cha-pel while at the same time building economic devel-opment and sharing new skill sets, and the end of the day the product is an affordable place for living, working and presentation of the arts, that’s a pretty big triple net win,” Butler said. Ar t sp ace’s t r a n s f o r m a -tion of the Bell School into per-manent afford-able housing for Tremé is all the more powerful considering the neighborhood’s multiple possi-ble futures, as is its focus on the preservation of Tremé’s culture, Saulny said. North agrees: “So many artists currently live in or have lived in Tremé — musi-cians, painters, sculptors, danc-ers. Having an affordable development dedicated to the artists of Tremé will help the neighborhood to retain its unique culture and spirit.”

A

A portico surrounds a courtyard behind the main school building.


ARTSPACE FOCUSES ON NEIGHbORHOODS in transition, and few would disagree that Tre-mé fits the bill. While some may argue that the swath of the neighborhood between Clai-borne Avenue and Rampart Street has seen increased renovations and an influx of new residents in recent years, the rate of residential restorations in the blocks lakeside of Claiborne, and for buildings on the Claiborne corridor it-self, has never compared. Until recently. These days, new projects seem to pop up regularly, each bringing fresh hope for restored vibrancy and new opportunities. Of these, the one initiative that could spur the biggest possible shift in Tremé’s economic and social fate is the Livable Claiborne Communi-ties Revitalization Study, a $2.8 million project that is exploring ways to improve the stretch of Claiborne Avenue from Napoleon Avenue to Elysian Fields and the adjacent neighborhoods. The study includes research on what would happen to traffic patterns and neighborhood conditions if the raised I-10 expressway, which stretches most of Claiborne’s length downtown, was taken down. Removal of the expressway was proposed by the Unified New Orleans Plan in 2007 and was a key recommendation in the city’s 2010 master plan. The study is funded by a special partner-ship between the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administra-tion (with roughly a third of funds also being contributed by philanthropic partners, the May-

or’s Office Strategic Opportunities Fund and an Urban Development Action Grant). National ur-ban planning experts and organizations such as the Congress for New Urbanism are trumpeting the possible benefits that could come from the overpass’s removal, as are local groups such as the Claiborne Corridor Improvement Coalition. Increased economic development opportuni-ties and improved appearance would benefit the neighborhood, they say, and it would ulti-mately present a smaller bill to taxpayers in the future, as overpass removal projects in other cities often cost significantly less than plans to repair the aging structures. And the elevated Claiborne Expressway is due for an engineering makeover — some experts say that such infra-structure has a life span of 30 to 40 years, and the overpass was built in 1968. Residents who remember Claiborne Avenue as it once was — a grand, oak-lined boulevard that fostered a vital streetscape of businesses, residences and pedestrian traffic — are excited by the prospect. Dialogues within the neighbor-hood have also shown, however, that many resi-dents fear that the displacement of low-income residents and long-time renters could be a by-product of the economic development and ris-ing property values that would be spurred by the overpass’s removal. Concerns about cultural loss have also been voiced. After construction of the expressway cut the neighborhood in two and disrupted the social gathering space under the oaks, residents reclaimed Claiborne by meeting underneath the overpass, where the

acoustics, protection from the rain and ample parking are a boon to Mardi Gras Indian tribes and residents who hold regular block parties. Other neighborhood projects are being uni-formly celebrated by residents and officials. The Circle Foods Store, which served for decades as the area’s one-stop-shopping spot for residents wanting groceries, clothes, household items and more, will hopefully reopen later this year on the corner of Claiborne and St. Bernard avenues af-ter owner Dwayne Boudreaux succeeded in se-curing $8 million in financing — including capi-tal derived from state and federal historic rehab tax credits — to complete its rehabilitation. The store had been shuttered since Katrina. Trum-peter Kermit Ruffins purchased and plans to reopen the Mother-in-Law Lounge on the cor-ner of Claiborne and Columbus Street, long a beloved Tremé bar and music club founded and once operated by local R&B musician Ernie K-Doe. Though Ruffins has not disclosed when he hopes to reopen the club, which has been closed since 2009, fans eagerly await the day. Another interesting project is housed within a beautiful circa 1925 brick building anchoring the corner of Claiborne and St. Ann Street, once a Canal Savings and Trust bank branch. It was recently purchased by the Carr family. Margaret Carr, a nurse at Oschner Hospital and native of the Lafitte project, has taken on the building’s revitalization with her husband David and two daughters, but they aren’t quite sure yet what it will be. The family has been working with students and faculty from the Tulane Master of Preservation Studies program among others to find a use that could revive arts and culture on the corridor and foster positive community gatherings (but also be financially viable). “I re-ally want to be an igniting force,” Margaret said. “This building is so big and beautiful, I want it to be some sort of cultural arts center — a place where the community can feel good.” PRC is even restoring a building on the cor-ridor — 1423 N. Claiborne Ave., the last remain-ing building of the Straight University campus, which was the first African-American university in the city. The circa 1871 home became a flop house later in life, but PRC’s Operation Come-back is restoring the building to a single-family residence. PRC also recently renovated and sold a shotgun at 2404-06 St. Ann St. The new homeowner will live on one side and rent the other at an affordable price. PRC’s Rebuilding Together New Orleans has also been active in the neighborhood: Since 2006, it has complet-ed repairs and restoration work on 62 houses of low-income and/or elderly residents in the Tremé and Esplanade Ridge neighborhoods. That’s just a smattering. With schools re-opened, homes restored and hope for the ar-ea’s overall revitalization growing, it is clear that Tremé is in a time of transition. -Danielle Del Sol

TREMé IN TRANSITION

orleans avenue

The elevated Claiborne Expressway. Photo by Robert S. Brantley

st. b

ernard a

venue

North Claiborne Avenue

esplanade avenue

Former Straight College building

Tremé Bank Branch

Bell School

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bringing back bell - artspace preservation in print • april 2013 bringing back bell the $38...

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