Street art adding curb appeal
Landlords, developers looking to cash in as graffiti goes from eyesore to trendy amenity
Julian Phethean’s first canvas in London was a shed in his backyard that he covered with bold lettering in spray paint. When he moved his art to the city’s streets in the 1980s, it was largely unwelcome — and he was even arrested a few times.
“We had nowhere to practice,” he said. “It was just seen as vandalism.”
These days, the canvases come to Phethean, better known as muralist Mr Cenz. Recent facades, which he shares with his sizable following, have included an abstract mural on a Tesla showroom and a portrait of Biggie Smalls, sponsored by Pepsi Max.
“I never would have envisioned that I’d be able to do it for a living,” he said.
Landlords wanting to attract young professionals once scrubbed off the scrawls, before graffiti moved from countercultural to mainstream. Now building owners are willing to pay for it.
From Berlin to London to Miami, the wider acceptance of graffiti has attracted developers looking to expand into trendy areas, companies wanting to relocate to hipper neighborhoods and brands seeking creative ways to advertise their products.
But that attention to once overlooked neighborhoods has pushed up rents, leaving artists, fans and local officials in a quandary: What happens after the street art that brought character becomes commodified?
Take Shoreditch in east London for example: Decades ago a rundown industrial area, it was a sanctuary for artists who used cheap rents to build a creative enclave.
“What artists bring is a sense of buzz: newness, creativity, trends,” said Rosie Haslem, managing director of Streetsense UK, a consulting agency. “Hipsters attract more hipsters who have more money and are able to start paying higher prices.”
That buzz also drew developers and companies that sought to leverage the popularity of Shoreditch. A former tea-packing plant now hosts a branch of the private members’ club Soho House. Down the road is Amazon’s largest corporate office in the region.
Developers are responsible for a chunk of the 300 or so murals splattering Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. The windowless walls of the former garment district had long appealed to graffiti artists, but one developer helped drive the 2009 opening of the Wynwood Walls, an open-air gallery visited by 3 million people each year.
“We had to find a carrot to try to bring investment into the area,” said Manny Gonzalez, the executive director of the Wynwood Business Improvement District. Street art, he said, was the lure. “We knew that we needed to keep the art.”
Five years ago, there were no office buildings in Wynwood. Now tenants include Spotify, accounting firm PwC and the venture capitalist Founders Fund. Sony Music has leased office space there.
In Wynwood, property owners promise that they intend to preserve the neighborhood’s artistic heritage. New buildings must include some art on their facades, and hand-painted advertisements are illegal.
But those regulations, some say, have led to diminishing organic spaces for artists, who cannot make the most of sponsored opportunities.
“The developers become gatekeepers to some extent as to what the public gets to see,” said Allison Freidin, a co-founder of Miami’s Museum of Graffiti. “And you hope that the developers make a great decision.”