REMARKS
Council Member Bottcher discusses challenges in activating empty storefronts
1:04:46
·
92 sec
Council Member Erik Bottcher raises concerns about the difficulty in convincing property owners to activate their empty storefronts with artist spaces, cultural spaces, or pop-up spaces. He highlights the challenges faced in his district despite programs like Tashima and Art on the Avenue.
- Bottcher mentions unsuccessful attempts to engage landlords on Bleecker Street
- He notes that landlords generally don't see the benefit in such activations
- Bottcher asks for ideas on incentivizing landlords to make storefront activation with artist spaces more common
Erik Bottcher
1:04:46
Wanted to get your thoughts on how we can get more property owners to agree to activate their empty storefronts with artist space, cultural space, pop up space.
1:05:01
We've struggled with that in our district.
1:05:04
We have great programs like Tashima, art on the avenue with Barbara Anderson, who's done incredible things all over the city where she's gotten property owners in a certain neighborhood to all activate their storefronts simultaneously.
1:05:21
But it's a huge, huge lift.
1:05:24
And I even at one point had all my interns trying to get Bleaker Street to all the landlords to activate their empty storefronts with artist pop ups.
1:05:37
And landlords by and large aren't interested because they don't they can't wrap their heads around it.
1:05:45
They don't see the benefit in it of it for them, and it so as a result, We really only have a small handful of empty storefronts activated as artist space.
1:06:01
What do you think could be done to incentivize landlords all over the city to activate their empty storefront with artist base so that it's more of the norm rather than something that happens every once in a while.
