When can the arts revive an economy?

By Andrew L. Pincus, Special to The Eagle

	Australian artist Natalie Jermijenko’s upside-down maple trees at Mass MoCA in full fall splendor. With the trunks conveniently out of the way, suspended from stainless steel tubs, ‘Tree Logic’ at least facilitates leaf pickup. Photo by Ben Garver

NORTH ADAMS

In Chicago as in North Adams, in Hartford, Beacon, N.Y., and Colquitt, Ga. (pop. 2,000), the idea is the same: A cultural or performing-arts center can spark a business revival in its community.

But don’t count on it. The formula won’t work every time or in every place, says Stephen C. Sheppard, director of the Center for Creative Community Development, which is studying the economic and sociological impact of arts institutions in those five places.

Most of the museums and performing-arts spaces under study “have economic and community development as a principal part -- maybe even a central part -- of their mission,” Sheppard says. “So they are really creating a cultural space, producing cultural events, but an important part of why they’re doing that is to have an impact on their community.

“We’re very interested in studying that, in learning about how effective that is, under what circumstances it’s effective, how it plays out economically, sociologically. Does it create new businesses? Does it bring people together?”

The study is intended to provide a broad guide for community regeneration through culture and the arts. C3D, as it calls itself, is based at Mass MoCA, which -- not coincidentally -- is one of the five catalyst institutions under study.

In an interim report issued last year, for instance, Sheppard’s group found that in 2002, MoCA attracted more than 94,000 visitors from outside Berkshire County to North Adams.

In that year, the combination of MoCA, which opened in 1999, and its spillover effect on businesses generated $14.2 million in growth for the local and regional economy, according to the study. The annual payroll in the city was found to jump to $155 million from $131 million in 1998.

Also in that time span, the violent crime rate in North Adams, which had been twice that of Pittsfield’s, dropped 58 percent, compared to a 2 percent increase in Pittsfield and a 23 percent decline statewide, the study found. It drew no conclusions about causes.

The study comes as cities across the United States look to museums, theaters and other performance venues to revitalize moribund downtowns.

A museum and performing-arts center like MoCA, however, is “not a magic bullet,” Sheppard said in an interview in his sprawling first-floor office in the MoCA complex.

“I mean, the business climate (in North Adams) remains fragile. There are lots of people attracted to try new businesses. Lots of them don’t make it, and people continue to struggle here in North Adams to find the right formula for a successful business.”

Sheppard, a professor of economics and public affairs at Williams College, teamed with MoCA director Joseph Thompson to create C3D.

The five-community study, due for completion next year, began in 2004 with a two-year commitment of $360,000 from the Ford Foundation and a matching commitment of $100,000 from Williams.

The North Adams study began a year earlier as a pilot project to qualify for Ford Foundation funding. Sheppard’s staff consists of assistant director Blair Benjamin (who is also MoCA’s director of development), research director Kay Oehler and a varying number of research assistants -- eight in all so far, all Williams students.

The study has Berkshire, national and even global implications.

In the Berkshires, Pittsfield is trying to replicate MoCA’s magnet effect on business through restoration of the Colonial Theatre as a performing-arts space and creation of a tax-sheltered downtown arts zone to attract visual artists.

In a 2003 study done for the Colonial, C3D found it capable of increasing the city’s tax rolls by $23 to $41 million and pumping more than $2 million annually into the economy.

The theater was seen as creating up to 100 permanent new jobs in addition to its own staff positions.

Sheppard said he doubted that the opening of the Colonial and the nearby Berkshire Music Hall would constitute overexpansion in an arts scene dominated by major performing-arts venues in north and south county.

When he came to Williams in 2000 from Oberlin College in Ohio, it struck him “as sort of curious that the largest city in the region, and in some ways the economic center, was the least well served in terms of cultural amenities. And that’s not normally the case. Normally the largest city also has some concentration of cultural amenities.”

Despite competition from north and south, he said, Pittsfield should be able to support two performance venues of its own and draw to some extent on the out-of-town audiences.

	Stephen C. Sheppard, professor of public affairs at Williams College and director of the Center for Creative Community Development in North Adams. Photos by Joel Librizzi / Berkshire Eagle Staff

The broader question, Sheppard said -- and it is a question the study is addressing -- is:

“Can this strategy work everywhere?

“Suppose that it works here in the Berkshires because we have a cultural tourism thing going.” he said. “Does that mean for sure that this is going to be a successful strategy for Schenectady, or some place that is not centered in an area known for cultural tourism? And if it works in Schenectady, could it also simultaneously work in Utica?

“At some point,” he said, “you must be at a stage where you’re stretching the ability to sustain these organizations.”

The expectations for culture take on national ramifications because of what sociologist Richard Florida calls “The Rise of the Creative Class” in his 2002 book of that name.

Florida, who spoke at a Clark Art Institute forum a few years ago found 38 million Americans, or 30 percent of all employed people, working in areas that call for creative (not necessarily artistic) endeavor rather than traditional skills as in the manufacturing or service sectors.

Business, law and health care are among the fields that demand creative talent in modern society, he says.

Creative people, Florida writes, “don’t just cluster where the jobs are. They cluster in places that are centers of creativity and also where they like to live.”

This was true, he says, in classical Athens and Rome, and more recently in Greenwich Village and the San Francisco Bay Area.

He cites Seattle, Austin, Toronto and Dublin as cities that “recognize the multidimensional nature of this transformation and are striving to become broadly creative communities, not just centers of technological innovation and high-tech industry.”

On the other hand, he said, “if places like Buffalo, Grand Rapids, Memphis and Louisville do not follow suit, they will be hard-pressed to survive.”

The message is: Under the right conditions, culture can pay.

For Sheppard’s case studies, he is focusing not on major metropolitan areas as Florida did, but on small communities like North Adams or targeted neighborhoods in the larger cities like Chicago and Hartford.

In each place, the catalyst is an institution that has opened or expanded within the last 20 years, making a before-and-after comparison possible.

In Chicago, the focus is on a west side neighborhood where the Mexican Fine Arts Center and Museum has opened.

In Hartford, Real Art Ways, a small contemporary-art gallery, performing-arts space and cinema in the Parkville neighborhood, is under scrutiny.

In Beacon, a small city comparable in population -- about 15,000 -- to North Adams, the focus is Dia Beacon, a vast contemporary-art complex, inspired by MoCA, that opened in 2003.

Seemingly the most unlikely candidate for rejuvenation through the arts is tiny Colquitt, in southwestern Georgia, where a down-home theater troupe presents a series of plays under the umbrella title “Swamp Gravy.” Based on a local oral-history project, the play changes annually and is staged during two seasons each year.

It’s too soon to draw conclusions about effects, Sheppard said, but the show does attract visitors from Tallahassee, Fla. (70 miles away), and as far distant as Atlanta (200 miles).

One or more of the C3D staff members visit each site to collect data, which typically comes from municipal offices, local businesses and the cultural institutions themselves. MoCA collects especially detailed data, showing “the diversity of neighborhoods that are drawn together by Mass MoCA,” Sheppard said.

Figures on property values are considered an especially useful tool.

Figures on new jobs are based not on head counts, but on “an analysis of linkages that show up in the economy,” Sheppard said.

In North Adams, that translates into who’s selling what to MoCA, to the tourists and “to the people who move here to sell things to the tourists.”

On this basis, the study conservatively estimates that MoCA and its offshoots have added 230 to 250 jobs to the local economy. About 60 of those jobs are at MoCA itself.

Outside of MoCA, the biggest increase in jobs has been in food services. Education services, such as computer training, enjoy the second biggest increase. (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts is not counted in education category.)

Faced with repeated cuts in government support for culture and the arts, the North Adams report says, “scholars and community development practitioners are just beginning to develop a comprehensive and coherent vision of the role that museums and other cultural institutions play in local community development.”

In this environment, the report concludes, “the development of research tools evaluating the socio-economic effects of cultural organizations on their local neighborhoods and communities is vital. This research takes a clear step in that direction.”

What MoCA does for North Adams

• In 1998, the year before Mass MoCA opened, the annual payroll of North Adams was $131 million. Four years later, it was $155 million, a real increase of more than $24 million in 2004 constant dollars.
• Employment data from the Census Bureau shows a net increase of 44 new businesses in North Adams following the opening of Mass MoCA compared to the four years preceding its opening, adding 255 new jobs to the city.
• The new jobs created as a result of Mass MoCA span a variety of sectors, including restaurants, small business, medical and education services.
• The new jobs have not been associated with lower than average salaries.
• Properties nearest the Mass MoCA site increased in value about $11,700 in 2004 dollars. The total impact on residential properties is almost $14 million.
• In 2002, Mass MoCA drew more than 94,000 visitors to town from outside Berkshire County, resulting in a total growth of $14.2 million for the local and regional economy in 2002.

Source: Stephen Sheppard