Take Our Rahway Artist Housing Survey!

The empty lot behind this building is the future site of AFHDC’s affordable artist housing in Rahway, NJ.

Last week, The Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation (AFHDC) launched a market study of those in the arts, entertainment and creative industries to determine the feasibility of and interest in affordable housing in Rahway, NJ. The launch event took place at the Hamilton Stage, the newest component of the booming Rahway Arts District (RAD).

This first step–a four-week initiative–is looking for feedback from those working in the arts who live in the region spanning metropolitan New York and central and northern New Jersey. The survey’s results will help shape the Rahway Residence for the Arts, a 69-unit affordable housing project to be developed by the AFHDC. Of course, the more people who take the ten-minute survey, the better, so if you’re interested, visit www.RahwayArtistHousingSurvey.org!

The proposed site is in the middle of the Rahway Arts District, on now-vacant land between the Hamilton Stage and the Union County Performing Arts Center, and only three blocks from Rahway’s New Jersey Transit train station.  The AFHDC development team includes Crawford Street Partners of Newark, NJ, and the Ingerman Group of Cherry Hill, NJ. A former two-story office building located on the site will be donated to the City of Rahway for use as an arts education facility.

Check out some video highlights from the launch (embedded below), which also includes photos of the neighborhood. During the event, attendees learned about AFHDC plans to redevelop the property owned and previously used by Elizabethtown Gas at 210 Central Avenue. The site will include spaces devoted to resident and community cultural use such as rehearsal rooms, galleries, studios, and an arts education facility, in addition to affordable housing for artists.

Along with Actors Fund President and CEO Joe Benincasa and the AFHDC’s Scott Weiner, attendees included leaders of the New Jersey arts community: Leo Vasquez of Rutgers University’s Arts Build Communities; Teya David and Libby Reid of the Union County Cultural & Heritage Commission; and Karen Pinzolo of ArtPride NJ.. Also in attendance were Rachael Faillace, executive director of the Rahway Arts District; Russ Taylor, president and CEO of the RSI Bank in Rahway; and Rahway officials including Samson Steinman, president of Rahway City Council and executive director of the Union County Performing Arts Center and Hamilton Stage, and William Rack of the Rahway Redevelopment Commission. Actors and other artists living and working in the region who would benefit from the availability of affordable housing also attended the event and were among the first to complete the online survey.

In May of this year, the city of Rahway designated the non-profit AFHDC as the redeveloper of the site for the affordable housing project. Together with its development partners, the AFHDC is planning to develop, own and manage affordable rental units for individuals and families with low and moderate incomes. Current plans anticipate construction to begin in 2013.

This is the first step in a community engagement effort that will be documented and shared widely. The survey will close on September 14th, after which the results will be captured in a report and posted on The Actors Fund website.

The Actors Fund Housing portfolio includes The Lillian Booth Actors Home, an assisted living and skilled nursing care facility in Englewood, NJ; as well as affordable supportive housing at The Palm View in West Hollywood, CA; The Dorothy Ross Friedman Residence (formerly The Aurora) in New York City, and The Schermerhorn in Downtown Brooklyn. Additionally, the AFHDC is actively evaluating opportunities for future developments in New York City, Newark, and Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Affordable Housing Update!

A shot from the ArtPlace grant announcement: Keith McNutt, Actors Fund; Olga Garay-English, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; Jessica Wethington-McLean, Bringing Back Broadway and Council Member José Huizar, Scott Weiner, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation; Teri Deaver, Artspace; Tim Halbur, Artplace; Travis Preston, California Institute of the Arts; and Aileen Adams, Office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The last few weeks have been incredibly exciting for the Broadway Arts Center project in downtown Los Angeles, for which The Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation (AFHDC) has been playing a critical role. On June 5, AFHDC announced the formalization of a new partnership with the Minneapolis-based Artspace as part of the project, which hopes to create a mixed-use development comprising a black box theater, art gallery, creative commercial space and affordable housing for artists. And to further underscore the project’s viability, ArtPlace (a new national collaboration of 11 major national and regional foundations, six of the nation’s largest banks, and eight federal agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, dedicated to transforming communities with strategic investments in the arts) announced on June 12 that the Broadway Arts Center will receive $470,000 – the largest national grant to be awarded.

Artspace and AFHDC have been working together for the last year and a half as part of the group of organizations studying the viability of the Broadway Arts Center, including the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, California Institute of the Arts, Bringing Back Broadway and Pritzker prize winning architect Thom Mayne and Morphosis Architects. In addition to public input meetings and focus groups, the organizations oversaw comprehensive arts market surveys and an affordable housing/commercial market study, a summary and initial results of which are available at http://creativespacela.org/. Funded through a grant from the NEA Mayor’s Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative, they found tremendous need for affordable space for artists, arts organizations and creative businesses in Downtown Los Angeles.

In addition to the exciting new ArtSpace/AFHDC partnership, the ArtPlace grant will bring the dream of the Broadway Arts Center closer to reality, and it was one of only four projects selected in downtown LA (the others were SCI-Arc, Cornerstone Theater, and Esperanza Housing Corp.). The next steps in the process of creating the Broadway Arts Center include site selection and evaluation, and while a timeline for completion of the project has not yet been finalized, Artspace (which has developed 30 properties around the country) believes projects of this nature can take anywhere from three to six years.

Visit our website for more on AFHDC, to find out how The Fund can help you find affordable housing, and for more on The Fund’s existing affordable housing projects, including New York’s The Schermerhorn and Dorothy Ross Friedman Residence, and Los Angeles’s Palm View.

Hey Los Angeles — Help Us Out By Taking The Broadway Arts Center Survey

Interested in assisting the cultural development of downtown L.A.? The Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation (AFHDC), together with its partners including the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and Artspace, has launched a National Endowment for the Arts–funded survey to assess the housing needs of the Los Angeles entertainment, performing and visual arts communities.

To make it a success, we’re encouraging members of the creative community — artists of all disciplines, individuals associated with the arts, entertainment and creative industries, arts and cultural organizations and creative commercial businesses — to complete the survey before October 10, 2011.

This project will help further the development of downtown Los Angeles’s Broadway Arts Center (BAC), a facility still in the planning stages, which will provide affordable artists’ housing, performance/exhibition space, educational facilities, and creative business space, and serve to help in the revitalization of the Historic Broadway Theater District. The results will help the partners secure further support and funding for the project, as well as influence the BAC’s location, size, number, and type of creative spaces/facilities, design features, amenities, programs and affordability.

We want to be sure the new facility meets everyone’s needs throughout the community, so the more of you who participate, the better! There are two separate surveys, one for individuals and another for organizations, so please take a few minutes to complete one of them (or both, if you’re eligible), and then help spread the word to your colleagues.

Please visit http://www.creativespacela.org/ to take the survey, and thank you for your participation.

The project team consists of a public/private partnership including The Actors Fund, The Los Angeles DCA, Bringing Back Broadway, the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA-LA), the City Planning Department Urban Design Studio, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and Artspace. If you’d like BAC project updates, “like” Creative Space L.A. on Facebook.

The AFHDC works to develop affordable, supportive and senior housing for the performing arts community that improves lives, creates jobs, fosters economic development and revitalizes communities. For more information visit The Actors Fund’s website, or contact the AFHDC’s President and CEO, Scott Weiner at 212.221.7300 ext. 106 or sweiner@actorsfund.org.