County Connection

The entire Pinellas county government management team showed up at our last Friday Morning Group meeting. Well, OK, not exactly. However, we were joined by our old friend, Michele Tuegel from the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department. Michelle brought us copies of the slick new newsletter she has been working on. It was just over a year ago that the Pinellas Arts Council became a department in the county government with its new name - the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department. Thus this newsletter was Michelle's first collaboration with the County Communications Department. It was just about this time that Marcia Crawley, Pinellas County's Communication Director walked in to join us. Now Michelle and Marcia swear they didn't plan this, but I dunno...

Actually, it was a real treat to have Marcia join us. She has been active at The Studio@620 and has been wanting to be able to join us for some time. But that drive to Clearwater kept getting in the way.

Michelle also brought us news of a Cultural Tourism Workshop to be held in conjunction with the Convention and Visitors Bureau on February 8th. The workshop will focus on helping arts organizations better market themselves. The workshop will be held at the Collaborative Labs at the EpiCenter on 58th Street and Ulmerton. For more on county art happenings, be sure to check out the Cultural Affairs Departments' retooled website.

Another topic discussed last Friday was affordable live /work space for artists. The St. Petersburg City Council has placed a new emphasis on affordable housing this year with the creation of a Housing Services Committee. A committee meeting last Thursday impressed upon me that there is funding available from state and federal sources to assist in providing affordable housing. So why not try to have some of that money spent on affordable live / work space for artists? Peter Kageyama had gotten me some information on just such a project he is working on in Michigan, The Armory Arts Project. This is a very interesting adaptive reuse of an old National Guard Armory providing live / work space and a large gallery display space for artists.

Michelle Tuegel told us about something being worked on closer to home in Tallahassee. The Art on Gaines project there just received a $350,000 grant from Artspace , a Minneapolis based non profit whose mission is

to create, foster and preserve affordable space for artists and arts organizations.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported last week that

Arts on Gaines is envisioned as a mixed-use development where artists live, work and hold exhibits; where organizations and businesses devoted to the arts share space and ideas, an incubator for arts-related commerce and creativity; and where an eclectic collection of restaurants and retail stores serves a bustling clientele.

A model of neighborhood revitalization.

Just the sort of vision we could use around here. If we want to keep the arts buzz going in St. Petersburg, we are going to have to keep innovating. Standing still only gets you farther behind in the end.


Speaking of vision, Kudos to the artists of the former Gallery Royale for contributing equipment (lighting & such) to the burned down IMAAGO Art Gallery's reserection efforts.

First Friday of 2007

The Friday Moning Group resumed the weekly (Friday morning, imagine that) meetings at the Atlanta Bread Company in Downtown St. Pete this morning. About 10 of us gathered to talk about things of interest to us.

As is often the case, there was another meeting going on at the ABC at the same time. A City employee who has something to do with the Arts, a Downtown Business Booster, and a Florida Progress Employee were all huddled right outside our little meeting room in the back. No tellin what they were talking about (they wouldn't tell), but I'll bet we had more fun and will get more done. Takers?

Our main focus again was how to support artists in St. Petersburg. It was suggested that one way to do that would be to try and get the City and the County to market us as an art buyers destination. The tie ins with economic and tourist development became rapidly apparent.Michele Tuegel of the County Cultural Affairs Council suggested that for St. Petersburg, it would make sense to approach Mayor Rick Baker. Herb Snitzer indicated he would contact Pinellas County Commission Chair Ken Welch.

There was also a discussion about affordable and mixed use housing development for artists. There is a critical need for affordable housing and studio locations for artists in St. Petersburg. Artists are particularly feeling the twin sqeezes of rising property taxes and property insurance. We talked about various options currently available to assist first time home buyers and also using properties the City has purchased primarly as a land bank.

We then moved to a discussion of historic preservation in St. Petersburg. There was a discussion of a plan to purchase a large chunk of the Jannus Landing block to preserve the buildings and the concert venue. There was also a discussion about the transfer of development rights on historic properties within the CBD-3 area in downtown.

Before the group really got under weigh, there was a rather lively discussion about education, which is always a good thing. The talk centered around how to close the achievment gap between white and other students. Heb Snitzer suggested that for the first at least two years, that children are in the public school system, be spent entirely on reading. It was suggested that this might help level the playing field for disadvantaged students. Their main disadvantage at this point is that a good portion of these children are far behind their counterparts in time spent reading with their partents or other care givers.

First time attendees this morning included:

Bob and Amy Barancik. Bob is an artist, photographer and independent film maker.
Cndy McFerrin, a developer and art enthusiast.

And we welcomed back Lexey Covell who is the Tour Coordinator for the Raymond James art collection, the most extensive corporate collection in the Southeast US.

If you were not at the meeting this morning, we missed you. If you were at the meeting and want to include something I left out. please do so in the comments.

We look forwad to seeing you all next Friday morning.