Developer creates studios as a draw for artists
Artist Lizbeth Ortiz was moving back to Houston from New York 10 years ago and asked her former art teachers where she could get a studio.
They directed her to the Commerce Street Artists Warehouse just east of downtown, which for much of the 1980s and ’90s was the closest thing Houston had to the raw, eclectic studio space once available in a place like SoHo in Manhattan.
“CSAW was the coolest art space to be in,” Ortiz said. “The rustic nature and open space reminded me of New York City.” The property was always full, and Ortiz could never get in. But a decade later, artists like her have another chance.
A local developer who specializes in restoring Houston’s limited supply of old buildings purchased the vacant warehouse and an adjacent building in a partnership and is bringing the properties back to their former uses as art studios.
The developer, Andrew Kaldis, will operate the property with Vikki Trammell and her husband, Ben Russell, longtime Houstonians who own an art supply store and studio building on Main Street in Midtown. Their property is called Art Square Studios on Main, and it’s one of three similarly branded buildings.
The others are Art Square Studios on Fannin, a building Kaldis purchased almost two years ago with condo developer Randall Davis, and Art Square Studios on Commerce, the East End properties.
Unlike in the 1980s and ’90s, when the Commerce Street studios were essentially run by the starving artists who had space there, the new owners will operate the properties as a business and the space will be leased to professionals. But the
rents will be low enough to attract folks like public school art teachers who want studios to practice their crafts, Kaldis and Trammell say.
The partners are putting more than $1 million into fixing up the 1920s and ’30s structures. They’ve knocked down an addition in the back of the original CSAW building at 2315 Commerce to make room for parking and are doing the same for its neighbor, 2327 Commerce.
They expect the original building to open this month with 31 studios. The spaces will be separated by 10-foot partitions that allow the high ceiling to remain open and the skylights visible.
Artists, photographers and designers have already signed up to take some of the space.
Including bills, the rents will range from $250 to $1,200 per month depending on the size and location of the studios, which will range from 250 square feet to 1,500 square feet.
The adjacent building includes two open floors of 15,000 square feet each. The first floor will be broken up into smaller spaces — a gallery and wine distributor have already committed to leasing space there — but the top floor is expected to be leased to a single tenant.
Kaldis and Trammell hope to find an arts organization or graphic art firm or even “a group of lawyers that love art” to lease the space, which is now used by a dance company called Red Door.
They say they are trying to do something good for the community by restoring the East End properties as land values are rising and new townhomes are going up all around them.
Kaldis, who has restored downtown’s Commercial National Bank Building; the Montrose property that houses Hugo’s restaurant; and the old Antone’s building at 807 Taft, doesn’t want to see this East End neighborhood lose its artistic and bohemian spirit.
“If we can’t preserve that,” he said, “all these people are going to be shifting farther out.”
Once the spaces are filled, they envision poetry readings, dance performances and other events or fundraisers being held there while the artists keep their studios open so people can see their work.
They see the three Art Square Studio complexes feeding off each other.
On a recent post on the Facebook page titled “CSAW Lives! The true stories of Commerce Street Artists Warehouse,” Wes Hicks showed support for the redevelopment project: “CSAW in the 1980s was a place, a gestalt and socioeconomic experience that could never be repeated today. Not just because the warehouse district of Houston has evolved, so have modes of artistic expression, so have social technologies. The way we lived, worked and played at CSAW is utterly unthinkable today. It’s great that a new generation will be inhabiting an updated space.”