- Austin Creative Alliance is a non-profit that supports the Austin arts community. It is currently housed in an historic building in East Austin.
- It presented a plan to City Council to purchase the historic building and help out the arts community.
- But for some unknown reason, a City Staff memo has torpedoed this plan.
Ok full disclosure right up front – I am on the board of Austin Creative Alliance. I am relatively new to it – I think almost a year now. But I joined it for a reason – I believe in its mission. Anyone reading this knows that housing and commercial real estate prices have skyrocketed in recent years. As a result, we are losing artists. For a city that prides itself on its artistic roots, that’s a disaster. So when John Riedie, ACA’s CEO asked me to join the board, I was very happy and honored to do so.
So why am I writing about this this week? Because we’ve had a hiccup that will hurt not only ACA but a lot of the Austin arts community. And I want to talk about it.
The Historic Building that Houses ACA
ACA’s office have been in an historic building on 81 San Marcos since approximately 2013. It is a great space that is a converted church. It not only houses ACA’s offices, it has a stage on which there are performances. And it also has studio spaces that local artists can use. And ACA leases out the stage and studio space at far below market rates to local artists. It is a great space that artists can use at discount rates.
But, as with many other art spaces around town, the property taxes are extremely onerous and on the rise. The owner of the property, therefore, needs to do something soon about them. And that means either raise the rental rates on ACA – and thus have ACA raise its rates to artists. Or he needs to sell it.
To that end, ACA came up with a very creative solution. Austin has a Preservation Acquisition Fund through which the City can acquire historic buildings that it wants to preserve. It has more than enough money in the fund to purchase this building and hotel occupancy taxes fund the Preservation Acquisition Fund. As a result, the money the Fund uses to purchase the building would be more than made up for in one year. And if the City buys the building and gives it to Rally Austin (formerly Austin Economic Development Corporation), then ACA could continue to lease the space. And could continue to provide excellent services to the Austin arts community.
City Staff Stops Plan
This plan seemed like a great idea and a way for the City to not only preserve an historic building, but also promote the arts. ACA had a lot of fruitful conversations with Councilmember Jose Velásquez, in whose district the building is, as well as many other councilmembers. ACA was confident that this no brainer plan was going to succeed.
That’s when the City Staff stepped in to pour cold water on the whole idea. For some reason that is not clear to me, the Staff sent a letter to Councilmember Velásquez explaining four reasons why the City could not go through with the plan to purchase the building. Those reasons, though, were inaccurate and faulty. Frankly, they just are not correct.
I do not understand why the City Staff sent this memo to Council. But its very frustrating because this is a great opportunity for Austin to put its money where its mouth is and step up and actually support the arts. And yet, for some reason they do not want to move forward with it. This is a huge missed opportunity to help the arts community – and it appears Austin is going to let it pass by because of an inaccurate memo from the City Staff.
