welcome to voices of the community your source for in-depth discussions on critical issues facing Northern California today's episode is part of our continuing special series focused on the Resurgence of the arts and culture sector postco 19 our journey begins with a reflection on the recent state-of-the-arts Summit a collaborative effort with arts for a better Bay area among the breakout sessions one topic resonated deeply affordable housing for our creative Workforce feedback poured in from Su
mit attendees expressing a desire for more time to explore this pressing issue in response we've crafted three follow-up episodes each delving into key discussions from the summit one of the other topics that came out of the appit breakout session on affordable housing and real estate is the potential for leveraging the post-pandemic market dynamics to facilitate Arts and Cultural organizations to acquire their own performance spases to explore this exciting possibility we've invited Julie Phelp
s artistic and executive director of counterpulse and Joshua Simon senior advisor at the Community Arts stabilization trust they'll reveal the Innovative real estate model that helped counterpulse spy their own performance space a model that could be a GameChanger for Arts communities Nationwide this is voices of the community where dialogue leads to change and every voice matters I'm joined remotely by counter pulse's artistic and executive director jilie Phelps and by community art stabilizati
on trust also known as cast founding board member and now senior adviser Josh Simon so welcome back to voices of the community Julie and Josh thank you for having us so as a followup to your participation our special series on the arts and culture sector we wanted to host you again to share with our audience the wonderful Creative Real Estate model that enabled counter pults to purchase their building in the tenderling neighborhood of San Francisco so with it I'm going to start with you Julie an
d have you provide a little background on counter pulse and then Josh turn to you and ask you to provide some background on ncf and the creation of the community art stabilization so Julie counterpulse of this space as George said in the tenderloin now but we have an over 30-year history of being in San Francisco and supporting interdisciplinary Arts so we started as an artist collective in a oversized living room on viadero Street back in the early 90s known as a for community space and then in
the early 2000s we were expanding and growing as an organization and we moved to the Som District where we rebranded and merged with our fiscal sponsor and became counter pulse we were there for just over 10 years this was before the tech boom and before all the condos and high-rises started going up and we you know were coming to the end of our 10year lease right as Twitter was opening up on the Market Street side of the same block we were on in there in a Soma so that's when we began shopping
around for our next home and in the early I guess it was like around 2012 through 2015 is when the kind of cast model and counterpulse and cast partnership was born so we'll go more into that but generally speaking we exist to support emerging in mid-career artists experimenting in their forms predominantly focused in dance but also Community Arts we have a gallery space ongoing residencies and co-productions that span divid theater to music great and and trash sure well the organization um You
referred to as ncclf was Northern California Community Loan Fund and they have since changed their name to Community Vision so I'll refer to them as Community Vision and I was their director of Consulting at the time there was extensive conversations with the city of San Francisco and Foundations and arts communities for many years at that time to try to figure out how to keep the Arts rooted in San Francisco prices were skyrocketing groups were being forced out and Community Vision was working
with many organizations to try and find ways to to keep them rooted we were asked by the ran Foundation to see if there was a way to work with organizations that are being forced out and one of the findings that we we had in our conversations many organizations were really good at what they did but Exotics Community Development Finance tools and bizarre tax credits just weren't a common Department within an within small organizations so essentially large organizations could take advantage of th
ese kind of tools but small ones couldn't so the idea came up to create an organization that could bridge that Gap and so that's how cast was born the reing foundation said Gee if they could give us a million dollars a year for five years could we solve help organizations and you said we're given the price of real estate we couldn't do that that's a small amount of money to help a lot of organizations but we could borrow against the five years commitment and that gave us the funding to then reac
h out to organizations like counter pulks most the initial organizations we worked with were organizations that Community Vision had already been working with and counterpulse really stood out as a great potential partner the cast idea was that there are many intermediaries that loan groups money but there is nobody to act as a real estate partner and to allow the groups to continue doing what they do well while the real estate partner does what they do well which is put together of the partners
hip so cast was created to secure and Steward affordable space as a partner and to find ways to keep space anchored in lower income communities so um cast for example with counter pulse you identified the building they're in now on Turk Street and you purchase the building with them so share with us how that model works right so cast acquires the building and then counterpart leases it is that like you would a trust like a residential trust where the owner buys the building if you will or has a
ground lease and then the trust owns the land is it that way or well I think the critical word is trust so the first thing we do is we we worked with counterpulse as well as a number of other potential organizations that to try and help to build trust first and to work out what our partnership could be and to assess financially where where was counter pulse in terms of its resources and its capacities so as a gap filler we tried to Fashion a partnership that would match what counter pulse had fi
ll in the rest so cter pulse was able to provide about 10% for the building and I should say we didn't this wasn't the only building we looked at a number of buildings but decided with counter pulse that this was the best location for their programming at that time and so together we agreed on the building and came up with a partnership where they provided 10% of the resources and we came up with 90% of the resources and that went Beyond just the money from Raiden Foundation we looked at other s
ources so we leveraged new markets tax credits we leveraged other forms of financial Tools in order to make in order to expand to the full breath of what C pulson spoke to do but so together we forged into the adventure that is real estate development which is not for the fate of Art and I would caution anyone going into a renovation project that it's it's going to be difficult so having that Foundation of trust and that Foundation of communication was critical to those early years and then part
of that model Josh is is the 7year buyback program that's that you structured with counterpulse which allowed Julie and her team s years if you will to raise the additional it was what $7 million Julie I think the $7 million with counter pulse's total Capital Campaign which included the purchase price of the land the renovations and sort of deal with cast but additional resources for counter pulse just directly like a wasting endowment to launch and expand programming because we were moving int
o a facility that was three times as big as our facility and we wanted to meet the need of the tenderloin as good neighbors and so the capital campaign for just the purchase was more in the range of 5.5 5.6 then there were these additional organizational benchmarks and go ahead Josh well I should say so our model is we come in as a capacity partner we put in the amount of money that the two partners agree and then over time we get essentially bought out as so we've given partner an agreed on per
iod of time to either be able to buy us out or to come to some other agreement but we do that in a partnership so in this case the tax credits were s year period the way the tax credits work is they provide a certain amount of equity in exchange for tax Economic Development I guess yeah an economic development tool but at the end of seven years the investor has gotten everything they wanted out of tax benefits so rather than tast holding on to those benefits we transfer that value to our partner
and that's the reason for the seven-year period is we all agreed that the seven-year period but the tax credits was also a good period for the fundraising with the agreement that if counter pul needed more time afterward we had some contingencies for that yeah yes well and and going back to your question of if it's leased or how how it works so in total the project spanned more like 10 years with the beginning of this trust building and relationship building and um looking at sites and consider
ing the you know facility that would wrap around counter pulse's programs and then putting together this package which included counterpulse providing 10% of the resources needed as of sort of initial tenant contribution that got bundled into this tax credit deal and shopped and then you know there was a basically a forgivable loan that's given on that so it's it's all quite complicated but the sort of onset of the doors being open so at the point of substantial completion counterpulse did sign
a lease 480 Turk Street and had a very highly subsidized lease payment that we were paying which is essentially just to offset the cost of operating the building so there was ad0 Turk LLC and it's cast as a majority member and counterpulse as a minority member and we're leasing the building from urk LLC those lease payments aren't necessarily rent to own but they were you know covering property insurance and the operations of the LLC and things like that and so that started at the the point of s
ubst fial completion which was after this new markets tax credit deal so the real Runway that counter pools had was more like 10 years so we had to provide that which for us ended up being about 1.3 million is 10% that was our initial tenant contribution I want to say I my timeline document isn't in front of me right now but around 2012 we weren't opening our doors until closer to 2015 and that's when our lease began with the trust model and so Julie giving yourself 10 years how did and then it
also changes the narrative right of of a traditional Capital campaign for a nonprofit especially for an Arts nonprofit how did the 10-year ramp if you will Runway provide you and the counterpulse team the opportunity to reach out to philanthropy Etc to help raise the Neal the the necessary money the real benefit was that there was a mix of urgency and time actually so there were these Milestones that we needed to reach so actually raising that first one one million in change that we needed to ge
t our seat at the table and provide our initial tenant contribution to kind of feel the deal that would that represented more money than counterpulse had ever raised cumulatively in the organization's history from Individual sources or that kind of thing so we that was a big push just to even do that and that was happening just like with a letter of intent and like a sparkle in our eye you know we're going to renovate this 10,000 foot building down the tender with the real estate model none of y
ou have ever heard about never been done before and we're you know this like experimental Grassroots Arts organization we swear it's going to work it's amazing so it took some real visioning both on the the part of the team but also on the part of our you know philanthropic Community to Believe in Us at that point but we know we're like we need to seal the deal we need to secure our secure our seat at the table for this incredible opportunity so there was that urgency and so we you know we have
really solid foundation relationships as well as a individual donor who actually helped us make up that first 1 million and then there was kind of a lull again right so then there's a little bit of time like we break ground we get the deal we find The Architects we're you know in design but we you know put a put this sort of series of phases into that seven-year period so that it doesn't just become this soup of like we need $7 million eventually you know we made a you know a series of deadlines
around you know opening our doors you know having a substantial amount of the money raised by the time our doors are open because a part of our Capital campaign was the wasting endowment to launch programs and one logic that really ended up working was git foundations who've never supported counter pulse before who are therefore very unlikely to give us a capital G gift to buy a building to get interested in our programs come on as program supporters of this wasting endowment launch a program h
ave a few years to prove to them that we're amazing and doing a good work and then be able to ask them for that Capital gift later so these sort of like you know kind of staggered steps of relationship building time to marinate then another you know like another kind of Benchmark that we can have some urgency around and raise another chunk of money so that that combination of time and urgency was really important given these Milestones of the projects and needing to have certain benchmarks met a
long the way so by the time we were opening our doors of the $7 million we had about six raised actually and that includes the tax credit in terms of how cul seized that whole $7 million which was $1.3 million in of itself and so then there was the wasting endowment and the initial tenant contribution and all of that's what makes up the total of seven million so we were really you know we really kicked off well and raised a bunch of money in the in the sort of first few years of the capital camp
aign and then we were able to let things grow and simmer and build a track record and build the trust with our community and you know provide the proof that us being in the tenderloin is a benefit to the city and to other sectors like we started working with the mayor's office of Economic and Workforce Development something we would never had never done before moving into the tender line so that was really that was a the the time could get tricky you know because urgency in fundraising is a is a
n iMagic ingredient that we all know we either need to have or fabricate in some cases so you know we were really sidelined but then I think in the end sort of supported by the pandemic actually because that ended up being the last sort of three years of our seven-year compliance period so we had intended to launch the final Capital Campaign which is essentially the like fire the debt or like buy out the partner kind of logic of the capital campaign and we had about $2.6 million left to raise so
me of that was like a replacement and maintenance Reserve just acknowledging that now you own the building you have to take care of the building but the a big chunk of that most of that was to complete what we needed to raise to actually write that check to cast so we you know we had intended to launch that at the kind of end of 2019 early 2020 and then the pandemic just came in and sweeped that all over and so we weren't able to actually you know there was time I mean we all remember what that
was like when I was like I don't know if anybody's going to ever come back to theaters ever again you know it felt very up in the air so we you know did some like thinking and planning and you know also just our own due diligence around you know this is our chance we we can exercise the option to purchase the building but we also don't have to exercise that option we can also be like this has been an incredible seven years I hope this building goes to a great organization we've outgrown it or th
ere's exit Clauses with the deal with caps and everything so but you know when we did that evaluation given the time that we had during the pandemic we you know of course our commitment to the facility as well as the neighborhood was only renewed and so we launched in the summer of 2021 with that Benchmark of 2.6 million and had essentially a year and a a year and change maybe more like 18 months before the end of that the sort of lease term with cast which was our first option to purchase so ag
ain there was this sense of urgency that we could leverage to get people like it's it's time to buy the building now even though we've been here I know you've been hearing this story for 10 years and you're a lot of people are like wait you didn't already buy the building so that was the challenge of the length of time we had is that a lot of people assumed that when we opened our doors we had bought the building because the messaging is confusing enough it's also even made more confusing by the
fact that no one had ever done anything quite like this before so even if you told them in what you thought was really clear language oh no well cast bought the building and now we have this compliance period people would just be like I've heard what I want to hear which is conter pul about their building so it was a it was a unique challenge to do the storytelling around the capital campaign and get the community to understand what we were doing and support it and the time was really key for t
hat in general but I think the the more important thing around the time was the building up cul's capacity to run and own a building because that's the you know like the money to buy a building doesn't mean that you're prepared to have a building and so even if we had been able to raise all seven million in a year or two we would be you know we're the seven years we had to you know I now have a dedicated some pump contractor that I know and trust you know like building the capacity to own the bu
ilding and the relationships like growing in the community that when we started we didn't know everyone who would eventually end up helping us by this building we had to meet those people and prove ourselves to some of those people so it was really it's been a really inspiring Journey for sure well I want to just hold on that point for one second because this whole idea of having the Scaffolding in place to be able to operate the building is is a critical piece and I think what cast is discoveri
ng more and more is I I heard a joke years ago from a foundation officer that the fastest way to kill a nonprofit is to drop a building on them and we're there to make sure that a nonprofit can't get crushed by a the weight of the building and what we're discovering as we the portfolio of groups that were're helping rows is that because of the strength of having a portfolio we have relationships with a broader and broader group of vendors and suddenly we're discovering we get we can get wholesal
e Insurance prices instead of retail and get lower costs of insurance and lower cost of vendors and bulk pricing and other benefits so finding ways to bring the benefits of wholesale expenses to smaller nonprofits that would otherwise play retail and bringing all of those those relationships to build a scaffolding for the organization to then build their own capacity over time and to some degree we're available to continue on and continue with a small ownership interest to be able to bring our p
urchasing po to our partners as well even afterwards and I think that's really the essence of the model is how to build Partnerships so that no nonprofit gets crushed by a building or by the financial expenses and the inevitable surprises of owning a building thank you Josh for that Wizard of Oz metaphor that was really good so Julie now that you own the building how has that changed and you really I mean part of working with cash and and through the whole process of raising the money you actual
ly own it out right it's not like you have a mortgage or anything at this point on the building is that correct it's complicated as you can imagine actually so you know the stability that counterpulse has experienced really did start at the outside of opening our doors and having that highly subsidized lease because the promise of being able to buy the building was there and the lease was very affordable so it's of course destabilizing in terms of just the capacity that needs to go into fundrais
ing but you know that's the that was still just like a part of a larger picture which really you know developed like a of longevity in place and planning and knowing that the Horizon is long which was new for me you know I I took over Connor pulse when I was 29 actually so I hadn't really had many Horizons very long at all before that so you know the that's really that represented a kind of an initial shift in the organizational culture in terms of how we think about ourselves as part of the cit
y and you know as participating in other sectors in terms of our our belonging to a neighborhood these sorts of things Ed shifting then and then in terms of the actual purchase of the building and having you know reached the top of the mountain and actually like succeeded in the fundraising which you know we always felt confident about but was you know it it wasn't done until it was done that really has been a pretty short period of time like we really just closed on the building at the kind of
turn of last year we needed some time to work out you know operating agreements and all of that because again we're piloting something and there's no template that really applied to what we were outlining so we're just really emerging into that new chapter of the organization where we own the building we aren't raising a bunch of money and on that hustle and you know kind of trying that on so it's been really exciting and you know the financial implications are excellent like the lease payment w
as low and affordable but we don't have to make it anymore so that's a savings to the organization and then I think at at present like what really feels math like notably different and this is a bit like woo touchy feely but it feels like a spiritual change like a sense of just ownership and belonging and sovereignty and just an inalienable like right to have space in the city for the your programs and your community and your artists and what you do and it's happening for me and I also see it ha
ppening in the people who work at counter pulse both as artists and staff and board members just a sense of like a kind of enlightening of a sense of purpose and Direction and belonging that is so hard to find in the Bay Area in the real estate culture you know a lot of people don't own it's un you know like in many other cities a lot of adult people at least own their home you know so they have that sense of they've had that experience of being like okay this is something I own but I'm also res
ponsible for it and and in the Bay Area a lot of the people who work at counter Pauls and are on the board and everything a lot of them don't even own their own homes so it's like this real sense of novelty to just try on that feeling of ownership and so that's kind of percolating through on a practical level we also are creating multi-year projection tools and pl making depreciation plans and usable life surveys to figure out when we need the roof replaced and how long we would need to be savin
g up money to do that and and these sorts of you know just taking seriously the responsibility side of ownership so you know right now that's sort of just percu and we're literally creating the tools to start tracking some of those long range plans about the safeguarding and stewarding of the facility but this kind of yeah this kind of spiritual or cultural development around belonging you know Place keeping you know it's like that tension between Place making and placee keeping it's like we can
't keep something if you don't already have it making is this idea of outst start doing something you know it's like just that sense that we just need to like endure and that that's what's radical about what Conor pulse is doing in this city and not changing but enduring you know so it's been it's been an really in incredible honestly experience and it's also quite interesting and enjoyable in a way to do these long- range plans around a facility and a financial dimension of of maturing an organ
ization like counterpulse to be ready for the responsibility of being a grownup and having house and you know we're in the middle of a strategic planning process that we Pro plan that we ratified in 2021 so you know I've already been percolating on what I think will change in light of this in light of the purchase and when we renew in 2026 with that plan I think that that will be an interesting moment for us to really think about what changes in terms of our strategies and services and just like
benefit like how to better leverage the facility and the capacity of the organization to benefit our community is now that we aren't fundraising and aren't needing to do the like you know you know the big song and dance of fundraising takes a lot of work actually and takes a lot of capacity from an organization that we now have to redirect to other things that we do that's great and would you say Julie just kind of following up on that with this new phase and new stability has that enabled coun
terpulse to better support the artist community that makes up counter pulse's ecosystem yeah well it's like I always sort of try and shy away from the change narrative because I do really believe that just even the lease and the seven-year compliance period that one of the most beneficial things that counterpulse was able to experience was the the privilege to not change to keep up or meet a new lease term or take on a lease that's you know like we don't need to be like okay we need to get some
Productions in here that sell tickets you know that's something that our peers go through you know things change in their real estate reality and they need to change they need to adapt they need to become a rental house they need to do less residencies and what's been really interesting about what counterpulse has been able to do is just keep doing what we do for our communities and that that's really significant and of service instead of something that the community had come to know and appreci
ate a need going away because now counter pulse is in this new building and it's too expensive now it's like nope we just got to keep our hourly rental rates the same price and if anything changed we used to do one residency a year and now we do three because we have more space and more Studios and you know this sort of thing but we didn't have to raise our prices we didn't have to change our Outlook we didn't have to become more commercially viable we're still predominantly supported through ph
ilanthropy all everything we do that's earned income that our artists pay to participate in is subsidized by Grant or Foundation support and that's actually sustained so you know I think being able to sustain those things especially over the last three to four years has been a distinct benefit like pulse obviously had a moment of being shuttered and shut down but even just the ability to you know really have sight control as they say during the pandemic and decide when and how we would do things
and what we could make available to our artist communities that different moments and you know state or city mandates around closures like that itself really supported our community and the fact that we had this relationship with caps and really had our own building gave us that sovereignty to do that even then so it's you know I wouldn't I wouldn't say that counters hasn't been able to increase our benefit but it's it's less important that it's increased as it is but it's the same and that in
a in a city such as San Francisco that's so material and changeable to have an Arts organization that supports innovators and creatives and Independent Artists and people focused on experimentation and intersecting art with activism and speaking truth to power that an organization like that lived through the tech boom lived through the pandemic and just kept doing what we were doing like that's I think the really incredible story of counter puls over the last few years welcome back to voices of
the community where we delve into critical issues facing Northern California communities voices of the community is made possible by generous support from the zelac Family Foundation dedicated to ensuring vibrant work is created new voices celebrated and diverse communities have opportunities to thrive learn more at z.org we're also supported by the peaceful world Foundation fostering a culture of Global Peace through hosted conversations and education discover more at peaceful world foundation.
org before we return to our dialogue with Julie and Josh let's take a moment to explore an excerpt from our 101 interviews with abmic Gest conducted by our ring reporters Isa nakazawa and Eric Estrada this segment off for steeper insights from artist and cultural worker Jason Wyman hi this is ISA nakaza with voices of the community and we're here at arts for a better Bay Area Summit 2023 thank you so much for talking to us can you just say your name and if you're representing an Arts orc say you
r org and if not just tell us a little bit about what you do great hi my name is Jason Wyman I am an artist here in San Francisco They them pronouns I have a business called querly complex that's part of the reason that I'm here today and I also have an Endeavor called tree of change practice which I do with my dear business partner Crystal Mason and we've been doing change management and political education for housing rights organizations and for arts and culture organizations wow so many ques
tions already but the first that we're asking people is how would you say the pandemic impacted the way that you're doing your work and the way that you're thinking about rebuilding or reactivating the Arts community in San Francisco if at all well I want to get away from the re because we've always been activating our communities even through the pandemic so there is no re and re reinvigorating re-energizing the Arts the re in that is actually a misnomer because it never ended and it never was
ever interrupted actually it changed and I think that's the biggest thing is that things changed during the pandemic and we need to be ready to talk about that change very explicitly and stop having language that in a lot of ways erases history that's also partly why I'm here is to see what our Arts advocacy organizations are actually saying because I noticed that there weren't actually very many artists on the stage talking about arts and the state of it so I'm here to listen and to find out ex
actly what our political leaders are saying because right now we're in a moment of hyper gentrification with our new housing element plan or yeah the housing element which is guiding all of our building in San Francisco for the next 8 years so artists need to be more aware of the intersection of art culture and land ownership not just land but land ownership thank you Jason that was so profound and I do think there's so many ways that language shapes the way that understanding the problem before
we even talk about potential Solutions right which people can get really fixated on it's like how are we even naming the issues that we're up against can you tell us a little bit about what you're noticing in terms of like the artist perspective being missing like what do you think where like how do you think the conversation is impacted when artists aren't in the space whether it's like intentional or not I think you know there is a lot of artists have to hustle so I don't want to put any of t
he onerous on artists here because we're all trying to navigate sticky situations new economies new ways of figuring out how we pay our rent and all of the competing opportunities that are actually being presented to us right now we are in a state where Arts the city has a narrative a meta narrative that's happening nationally and even globally about a doom Loop about violence and all of this other stuff and it's scaring away conventions it's scaring Away business opportunities but it's also sca
ring away tourists and San Francisco our lovely visitors bureau sells San Francisco as an arts and culture town right so arts and culture especially even through our own propositions is directly tied to the hotel industry and tourism so right now you know all of these lovely opportunities are happening and we have to be aware of how these lovely opportunities that are presenting themselves are disperate there're a one-off thing here and a one-off thing here and there's not a lot of coordination
between all of these different initiatives and thus the artists on the on the front end are having to do double triple quadruple the work trying to get into these opportunities we actually need more streamlining of administration and we need more political education of artists so that we can understand how to better advocate for ourselves versus relying on places like the Opera or grants for the Arts or the Arts commission to be doing the advocacy on behalf of artists yeah a lot of the people I'
ve talked to today have mentioned this like need for actual interdependence instead of the rhetoric of it one of my last questions is I also feel like often times in moments like this artists are used to cover up often times gentrification and so we do become kind of The Gatekeepers or the inter lockers between like accelerated beautification efforts and like we do kind of become the people who are in the middle right which has a degree of complicity even if we are on survival mode how do you na
vigate that or how do you kind of like find ways to be compassionate to yourself because you need to be an artist who's sustainable but also have politics around what you're doing this is a really good question I have a very concrete answer so you know this last weekend was Pride weekend yeah and there was a fabulous people's March down poke Street which was the original Parade route of our protest here in the city and it ended at a beautiful event on Fern alley Fern alley has the fern alley mus
ic series and it is done by the lower pooke community benefit district and Music City events and it was a wonderful time I had a booth there myself I really enjoyed myself it was intergenerational it was multi-racial we were doing interactive art making on Fern all of the things that we want to be doing giving everything away for free not charging money right so it was really beautiful and really lovely the next morning I woke up and I started doing a little bit of digging around where some of t
he financing for these kinds of art fairs are coming because I actually talked to some of the artists there and you know we're all struggling and we're trying to weigh are these art fairs worth it or not do you know what I'm saying and when I started looking in at the financing behind it there was a $2 million investment by the same man who has been trying to get surveillance cameras all over San Francisco great example exactly so for me I'm looking at this and I'm like this is a wonderful oppor
tunity I was able to do all of the things that I wanted to do in the way that I wanted to do them and also I know that my involvement here is adding value to literally a gentrification project like not kind of it's a literal investment by a gentrifier by a tech gentrifier into art things so for me I am working on actually writing about that not shying away from the complications of it and instead trying to be open about the fact that this is going on and then asking my other artists what are you
noticing how are you navigating it not judging people about it but saying here's what I'm noticing it's making me feel icky I don't know what to do about it what are you doing about it and I think that is we need to be honest about how we are and are not contributing to a system because we all are contributing to systems wow Jason I yeah if you're listening I feel like there was a lot of gems in that in terms of not hiding not hoarding and like really having a spirit of curiosity and generosity
in terms of turning to other artists and not judging or assuming that other people are like reving in the complicity and that maybe that is the beginning of the work that you were talking about earlier of Us coming together to make decisions with people power because if we're being honest we can't shift that much alone no so we need each other so and then my last question is you kind of are answering it but what are you looking forward to today like are there folks in the room you haven't seen
in a long time are there people that you've been wanting to meet in person like tell us a little bit about what you're looking forward to I'm looking forward to being very awkwardly shy and off in the corner and just listening that's really what I'm looking forward to it's still a lot to be in these kinds of rooms and networking just it was a lot for me before Co so that hasn't really changed either so uh you know for me I'm just really here to listen so thank you for inviting me to speak instea
d and U if people wanted to stay in touch with you how could they find you or your work there are two places you can find me one is querly complex.com I'm also queerly complex on all social media queerly complex.com you can also find my other work with Crystal Mason at tree of change.net that's tree of change.net thank you so much for sharing your wisdom Jason we really appreciate it thank you let's rejourn our discussion with Julie Phelps artistic and executive director of counterpulse and Josh
ua Simon senior adviser at the Community Arts stabilization trust as they offer invaluable perspectives on their collaborative Journey revealing the intricacies of how they orchestrated counter pulse's successful acquisition position of its performance space wonderful insights so Josh coming back to you counterpulse was one of the two pilots right at the time that you're putting all this together over the decade how has C been able to leverage this pilot program this experimental real estate mod
el in the San Francisco Bay area as well as have other cities counties countries adopted the model yes it's it's been a amazing journey both as a board member and now you know is their their senior advisor the model has grown and evolved we're discovering as I mentioned earlier the value of scale and because of that we're looking at are there problems in terms of space that can be solved with more scale so we're currently working with a number of artists who had been in the community at Pier 70
in San Francisco and the Dog Patch neighborhood for many years and working with the developer there to see if if the affordability of that Community can continue by expanding the community and and having a a bigger complex and in that case cast would be a longterm operator of the facility possibly so that's one possibility we're looking at we're looking at we're working with the black cultural Zone in Oakland which is creating a Liberation Park which is a culture and arts based Community Develop
ment effort be being a anchor and a hub for Arts and Cultural organizations to be able to strengthen and be a base for economic development in the East Oak neighborhood uh we're working to strengthen the Ecology of I par and arts organizations working in partnership with oaka which is a organization that rents spaced Arts and Cultural organizations for events and and long-term trying to figure out ways that we can work with individual artists so we're looking at a number of different models look
ing for ways what we called steart facilities in particular we're now looking at ground floor space based on in part the success the counterpulse has had as retail moves to the internet how do we work with organizations and owners activate the ground floor space in ways that have long-term viability and that help to bring people back downtown and create places for for people to gather again and for people to connect across the the various issues that we need to gather around so that work has att
racted a lot of attention around around the planet actually and we've been asked to talk in Austin and Denver she have Vancouver and there's a effort to replicate what we're doing in London so there really work around the world looking at how to take this model and how to sort of create a partner to provide the scaffolding to make sure that organizations can support the space they need great so I'm gonna ask each of you to just share with the audience some of the things that you've learned in th
is process in this pilot and what are some of the things that you would recommend for local cities and governments to support this new Creative Real Estate model for More arts organizations to be able to purchase their building so Julie in your process what do you feel that you know you and the counterpulse team have learned and what are some of the recommendations or requests that you you would have yeah well going back to the beginning where Josh mentioned that real estate development and reno
vation projects are not for the faint apart I think the very first thing that I always do recommend when people ask me for advice on if they should buy a building or how they should buy a building is first really think about if you need to own a building is is is is having your own space and owning your own building a significant addition to what you as a nonprofit or charitable organization are doing for your communities and if your answer to that is no then there's a lot of other models that c
ould be better fit for people and even cast has of course this is sort of like the initiative model that was launched on but has taken on serving as a you know long-term lease holder that sublets to smaller nonprofits and can still take care of some of the like facilities management and overhead stuff that a lot of small companies don't want to build the capacity to do and and so there's there's options and ownership you know has a particular fetish and I think the US American context in particu
lar as the sort of only way to have really made it as a person or organization but if you look more broadly across the globe there's a lot of real estate models that work what doesn't work is feeling completely destabilized in your real estate but there's more than one solution to that problem and ownership is not the only one so that's the first thing I always recommend and you know having a distinct and compelling vision for space for your organization and for your community and having you kno
w an actual site that is compelling and and fits like the fit for your organization is really key a dimension that was really important for us deciding to purchase the building here in the tenderloin is that we had just you know we were at the end of our leads in Sonoma we were busting at the scenes of that building we had approached Community Vision to do a a facility strategic plan to identify what is our ideal facility and you know we had a list of things that we knew we wanted you know we wa
nted to have our a standalone building so that we could have Amplified music without having issues with neighbors and we wanted to be in a commercial district and we wanted X number of square feet and so you know you know identify what you're actually talking about and don't leave it in this abstract idea of like we just want to own our own home it's like get specific is it ownership what you say home what do you need what are the actual specifications of the building that would serve your you b
est and then do if you know if you can't find that building then you know you need to start iterating your vision and until you get to something that makes sense because the there's a way in which this was the pilot it was a huge success it went really well a lot of stars align that is hard to fully comprehend unless you were there in the early days of launching this model like the Connor pulse and our commitment to serving communities and the location in the tenderloin and then this you know fo
rmer Cabaret theater that was available you know one half BL from a BART station and you know like and then the trust and the relationships on top of all of that you know not and then of course then the fundraising started you know so it don't go head long into it in a ro out of a kind of romantic notion to own a building make sure you really know what you mean and you know how what would really solve the issues that you're thinking you need to solve by thinking you need to own and that may lead
you to the same decision you may really want to own a building but make sure to just like really unpack it and make it concrete before jumping to this because it is is very very difficult I joke sometimes that if I hadn't been 29 and single like there's no way so and it's a joke but I actually also like think I'm I'm serious so it's a lot of work and it was a lot of work and it's totally worth it but it's only worth it if it's actually the right thing for you so just make sure to get clear on t
hat first you know and yeah once you have that Clear Vision that's also what underwrites all the rest of the success like once you have a clear vision of what you're doing why you're doing and are like really confident and can stand behind this being the right thing for your organization the rest of it falls into place it's like a lot of things in life you know like you keep hitting roadblocks a good thing to ask because you're the least common denominator in all those roadblocks like what why i
sn't this lining up you know and it may just be that it's not the right fit you know you've been pursuing the wrong goal so yeah I don't know if that's too dire not inspirational enough but it's you know it can be the right thing for people and it's not always if if I can lift up something you said Julie this idea of real estate Readiness so Community Vision has a great real estate Readiness training program which I recommend people to take a look at but what that means is real estate is just a
rapper that holds an activity and that rapper has a cost and the activity has a cost and so the activity is supported by a cash flow and the cash flow is either enough to support the activity and the wer or it's not and this that that cash flow has to be sustainable so you have to be able to project that it's going to be sustainable for long enough to to sustain the activity and the rapper if you start out with the building without the activity being clear it collapses so being real estate ready
means that you understand how the cash flow is enough to be able to support the activity and the building at wraps if the building's too big for the activity you'll still get crushed by the expense of that so that real estate Readiness is I think the critical piece of this whole adventure and we we work with Community Vision to try and make sure that our organizations are real estate ready and I think there's a lot more Innovation that can happen with government for those organizations that are
because we live in a very unique time I have never in 45 years in this business heard of the owners of large downtown buildings giving their buildings back to the bank most recently the San Francisco Center which in the 90s was the most valuable real estate in the United States was given back to the bank we have not lived in times like this when because of retail going back to Thea and office workers not coming back downtown people aren't Gathering and buildings aren't worth what they were and
cities are struggling with what's the what's the relevance of gathering in urban areas the Arts are critical Arts and Cultural activities are critical components for Gathering so now is the time to work with our policy makers to look at what tax benefits can we be looking at what incentives what permit Expediting and other measures can be taken to reactivate our downtowns with organizations like counterpulse and anchor those organizations as foundations for healthy Multicultural cities and for g
athering places where we can gather across all of our differences and have the critical conversations that we need as a country to come back together that's wonderful and and Josh you any other suggestions or Julie any other suggestions for you know cities or counties or countries that are that are out there that want to Foster you know this type of a program to support their arts and culture sectors well I mean speaking not to the Arts leader folks but more of the you know people designing Urba
n centers tackling issues of vacancies and their own City centers around the world is that the Arts are a really incredible sector in a city and if you don't already think of it that way you should start the the jobs we create per dollar the stats are out there the way we bring people together in when other businesses you know their workers won't even come back to the office and people will come to a small independent theater venue just really valuing what Arts can do for Center cities and how i
mportant it is to Resource theater organizations live Arts organizations but Arts organizations in general with space because we need it we know what to do with it and what we create with space in cities is so invaluable in creating diverse vibrant but also economically stable Arts organizations not always sometimes super huge what the Arts are doing but it's deep the roots that we have in the community and therefore the resilience that we have to live through booms and busts and pandemics and c
ontinue to serve the community continue to drive foot traffic continue to create economic opportunities for local people to have jobs and work and express themselves is just incredible and so if you're struggling with a storefront or you know a vacancy or just remember to think about the Arts like yes think about retail yes think about restaurants we you know we know that those things are things that are needed in downtown neighborhoods or cities in general but just make sure to think about the
Arts and not just commercial Arts but independent Grassroots community- based Arts organizations well I'd like to go One Step Beyond that Julie and that the the R of economy is 7% of the California economy the California economy is the fourth largest on the planet uh arts and culture are critical economically and beyond that arts and CR culture are critical for healthy neighborhoods and bringing together low income communities the hospitality house arts program in San Francisco has been a critic
al piece for many homeless people to stabilize and build hope and be able to rebuild their lives many programs like this are critical for people to be able to address their homeless situation to address their economic situation and to just build hope in difficult times which is a foundation for economic renewal and for for personal growth so I see this as something that's critical to look at from a policy standpoint what is the Arts component of every city what is the cultural Zone and how do we
put resources behind those cultural zones whether it's tax abatement or tax credits or or just outright funding California eliminated Redevelopment many years ago and we have yet to find a tool for reinvest ing in our cities I think it's a critical time to find ways to reinvest in our cities whether it's through the enhanced infrastructure Finance districts or other Finance tools that can be used to reinvest in ourselves at the end of the day if we don't invest there's no place no reasons to ga
ther and as Gathering becomes less and less a priority the conversations that hold our society together don't happen so I could go on in terms of specific and don't don't get me nerding out on on tax credit tools we'll take all day but love to talk to any of your audience members in the future about how we can incentivize places together wonderful what a great conversation I'm so glad I gathered you took a while to get us all together but a really great conversation so I want to thank both Julie
and Josh for sharing their and their organizations work to support our arts and culture sector and creative Workforce we'll make sure that our viewers and listeners have your contact information your websites and social media so they can get engaged and support all of your work to support our arts and arts culture organizations especially as we continue to work our way on the other side of the covid-19 pandemic so Julie and Josh thanks so much for being back on voices of the community thank you
for having us and with that we've reached the conclusion of another ating episode of voices of the community today we've had the privilege of hearing from Julie Phelps artistic and executive director of Contra paulse and Joshua Simon senior adviser at the community art stabilization trust together they've guided us through the Innovative real estate model that empowered counterpulse to secure its base highlighting its potential to enrich Arts communities Nationwide to learn more about our guest
s and their organizations programs Services volunteer opportunities and how to support their cause of the donation visit voices ofthe community.com click on the link to the arts and culture series and find episode 9 you can also hear more from Julie about nonprofit board governance in episode one of the series and more from Josh about building affordable housing for our creative Workforce in episode four of this series today's episode was made possible through a special co-production partnership
with arts for a better vay area for their state-of-the-art Summit on June 28 2023 we extend our heartfelt thanks to our incredible technical crew including the audio and video wizard and our associate producer Eric Estrada additionally we'd like to express our gratitude to our steamed co-production partner bayac media and their dedicated staff Paula aroni Andy Konami Isa nakazawa and Javon Giles and let's not forget the graphics magic skillfully crafted by Casey n from Citron Studios we extend
our sincere gratitude to our valued broadcast partner who help bring voices of the community to the airwaves thank you to KSF LPFM broadcasting on 102.5 FM in San Francisco and kpca LPFM airing on 103.3 FM and Petaluma we're also grateful for the support of PMA Community Access TV and bayac media's SF Commons Public Access TV channels 29 and 76 their partnership ensures that our discussions reach a wider audience sparking meaningful conversations and fostering Community engagement thank you for
your continued support and commitment to amplifying diverse voices and perspectives voices of the community is made possible by generous support from the Zack Family Foundation dedicated to ensuring vibrant work is created new voices celebrated and diverse communities have opportunities to thrive learn more at z.org we're also supported by the peaceful world Foundation fostering a culture of Global Peace through hosted conversations and education discover more at peaceful world foundation.org ta
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