Drive down Park Boulevard, and the 5600 block jumps out, even at cruising speed. Bright sculptures, retro signs and unusual buildings make it clear: one of these strip centers is not like the others.
During the past few years, Pinellas Park has put considerable investment into fostering an arts district, an effort to stem the tide of petty crime, buildings in disrepair and vagrancy impacting surrounding neighborhoods.
To date, the city has spent over $3 million in Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds — often used by local governments to eliminate neighborhood blight and encourage private development — to purchase and improve properties along the block, one by one renting them out to creative businesses, adding live/work bungalows, new galleries, and a wall of murals to the growing district.
Debra Rose, library and cultural affairs administrator for the city, has a graduate certificate in creative placemaking from Ohio State University. She started work with the city in 2001 in community planning. Last spring she moved to the city’s new cultural affairs department.
“It has been a remarkable transformation,” Rose says of the district. “Our challenge is making sure that area is well-connected to the community as a whole — that it links to businesses, creative and otherwise, throughout the city, and that it evolves as an area that’s an asset for all of the community.”
Behind the 5600 block is a core historic district, housing generations of families in many of the neighborhood’s oldest homes. The application for studio space encourages artists and creative businesses to engage locals with new classes and events.
“They’ve really brought it back to life,” says Nancy Davis, a resident of the neighborhood since the 1970s. “I love the quaint brick roads [on 75th Avenue].”
Pinellas Park laid the groundwork for the Park Boulevard cultural district when it created the CRA in the late 1980s. Since then, the city has acquired multiple properties along the 5600 block, and in April 2013 supported relocation of the Suncoast Haven of Rest ministry, formerly serving the hungry and homeless on that block, into a larger facility on 9th Avenue North in St. Petersburg.
A year later, the strip center got a vital shot from a city-led incubator program offering inexpensive office space to start-up businesses and in-house mentorship from St. Petersburg College faculty. The city opted to modify the business incubator into artist studios when the Pinellas Park Better Block Project gauged interest from the surrounding community and enlisted its support in envisioning the emerging district. Since then, some tenants have relocated to make room for the next phase: a block of 10 artist studios and one shared gallery space being leased out by the city for one-year terms.
Studio applications went live on January 6, and the artist selection process begins this month. The city will give preference to visual artists. Units range from 120 to 325 square feet and rent from $125 to about $320 per month. One of the new resident artists will serve as a volunteer gallery coordinator in the short term, although Rose says she would love to see an arts co-op become more actively involved in managing the space over time.
Workshops and walking tours in June 2015 kicked off a months-long planning process that culminated in early October with a weekend-long pop-up event, which transformed the corridor with shipping container shops and galleries, temporary landscaping, and an outdoor stage. The city is now taking action on ideas birthed during that process.
Artist and gallery owner Clayton Swartz moved into his 2,700-square-foot space about 18 months ago, and has since watched neglected properties improve and new businesses move in along the strip. His colorful metal sculpture at 5609 Park Boulevard marks the eastern edge of this burgeoning cultural district.
Swartz says he is getting results with successful exhibition openings and art sales, but regular weekly traffic remains on the slower side.
“This area is not known for arts,” Swartz says. “It doesn’t have much pedestrian traffic — there’s no Starbucks right next door.”
What is next door? Feed stores, nail salons, insurance agencies, and across Park Boulevard, a pawn shop and a few vacant storefronts bearing a reminder of the area’s former state. But residents, city officials, and artists tackle each hurdle with enthusiasm, working together to re-brand an area more often associated with marine and equestrian industries than with art.
Swartz lives off of 70th Avenue, less than a mile from his new gallery space. He says convenience was a major factor in his move.
“With my schedule and studio [location], I could never open a gallery in St. Pete or anywhere else further away — I either would open it here, or nowhere,” Swartz says.
Vince Pompei had a studio in south St. Pete for a few years, and relocated it to Pinellas Park’s 5600 block more than two years ago, becoming one of the district’s first tenants when he signed a 10-year lease on a two-story, 4,200-square-foot space with the city.
Pompei’s Beer Can Art Festival, coming to the block in early March, pokes fun at Pinellas Park’s blue-jean image with a contest involving structures built from, yes, beer cans.
“The support here from the city is impressive,” Pompei says. “There’s a commitment to people who’ve helped build the district, which you don’t always get in other places.”
The core area of improvement now runs from 56th to 60th streets along Park Boulevard, but the city is picturing long-term opportunities to link what’s happening in the new creative district with growth of the entire boulevard corridor.
“We are watching other arts districts as well, because that balance between sparking activity and halting gentrification is a very difficult line to find, and cities throughout the United States have gone about it in very different ways,” Rose says. “We have what we hope is a new approach, but no doubt we will face challenges. All of us are learning together what the right path is, and we’re trying our best to ensure it’s sustainable for the artists and the community over the long term.”
Duncan McClellan runs a popular “three-ring circus” (as he puts it) over in the Warehouse Arts District of St. Petersburg, comprised of a gallery, hot glass workshop studio and the DMG School Project, housed in a renovated 5,800-square-foot former packing plant that he purchased in 2009.
“You allow artists to live, work, and show in the same space, and if they’re residents too they take care of the neighborhood,” McClellan says. “It’s always laudable, that they’re trying to make space for artists. I particularly like cities that make a place for artists that will permanently remain. I’m very much in favor of artists owning their own studios.”
Pinellas Park City Councilman Rick Butler, a lifelong resident of the area whose real estate business sits near the center of the 5600 block, says the city would consider selling some of the newly minted spaces to galleries or artists, if interest develops.
“Bottom line: It’s all about improving our neighborhoods and making them better places to live,” Butler says.
With properties currently on the market along both sides of Park Boulevard adjacent to the district, and values rising, the city hopes to see private development taking advantage of the momentum, and encourages new tenants in the district to host more events in hopes of creating a destination.
“I really see the area as up and coming,” Swartz says. “If you’re a good artist, I think people will travel to see you. If you put on good shows, people will come to your shows.”
At Swartz’s gallery exhibition last month, patrons had trouble parking for three blocks around. Butler says it marked record attendance for the district.
“It was the most people I’ve ever seen on this block in my entire life,” Butler says. “It’s opened the city council’s eyes — they see this thing has a lot of potential.”
More information or art studio applications are available here.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2016.