North Side public art runs into city ‘bureaucrazy’
Alarge piece of public art on private property is one of the most interesting things to appear in the East Deutschtown section of Spring Garden in a long time. Located at 826 Madison Ave., visible to traffic headed toward Parkway North, Scott Bye’s “Spare Change” is a tilted massing of the tops of former electrical spools, painted silver.
Neu Kirche Contemporary Art Center, also on Madison Avenue, initiated the work. On Monday, Neu Kirche co-founder Lee Parker showed me the sculpture, among others that now dot the neighborhood. They are part of the art center’s Fallow Grounds for Sculpture series, placing works of art on vacant sites with permission of the land’s owner.
She also showed me a letter from the city’s department of Permits, Licenses and Inspection, dated July 22.
The letter proves just how wrongheaded it can be to follow the letter of the law when no one is hurt, no one is complaining and, in fact, the very “violation” is an example of the seeds of change that forward-thinking leaders — like, say, Mayor Bill Peduto — like to tout.
The city’s letter states that Cassique Properties, which owns 826 Madison Ave., has changed the use from commercial to art structure. Therefore, it needs a certificate of occupancy, and then an inspection, to make sure that building and zoning codes are being followed.
It should be spelled “bureaucrazy.” Here you have a fastidious oversight that is, paradoxically, visionless and hamfisted. This letter is essentially a form letter. How does this instruction jibe with a grassy meadow that holds a very silent piece of sculpture?: “You are hereby directed to cease operation until all necessary permits are secure.”
Cassique Properties was generous to give Neu Kirche permission to install Mr. Bye’s work, but no property owner should be expected to fight city hall for the right to keep someone else’s work. Neu Kirche has the passion to fight, but it isn’t its property, so there’s the rub.
A work of art on a vacant lot does not change the lot from being developed commercially. Land is not an art structure. An art “structure” can be disassembled.
This is precisely what might happen if within 30 days someone doesn’t get down to Ross Street and get a certificate of occupancy.
If you own a commercially zoned lot and want to put a piece of sculpture on it, you have to deal with Title 10, Section 111.1 of the city’s code of ordinances, the International Building Code chapter 1002 and/or the zoning code Title 9 section 922.02A.
This is where you wag your head from side to side. Feel free to roll your eyes, too. “Spare Change” sits out in front of the DaVita dialysis clinic, the first commercial development in the neighborhood in many decades. It was built two years ago.
“This is going to scare all the local owners from donating their properties for art,” Ms. Parker said. “If the city doesn’t get behind what we’re trying to do, it’s going to cause the whole program to collapse.
“We have a mayor who says he supports the arts and wants to make a difference in communities like ours, where art is a catalyst for change. The city needs to pull its head” out of the sand.
The Fallow Ground series, Ms. Parker said, “is a great opportunity to shift the concept of the value [of vacant lots].” They are often seen as blight, but have potential to bring a community together through gardening or art.
At the end of September, the first artist in residence arrives to stay in a house that’s being renovated adjacent to the old church.
Lee and Greg Parker purposefully invested in the old Immanuel Church on Madison Avenue last year to make a place of uplift, to invite residents to take part in contemporary art. (Neu Kirche means “new church” in German; it was built in 1889 as Evangelische Imanuel Kirche by a German immigrant congregation.)
The Parkers moved here from New Zealand. They and their children visited in 2012 while she was doing an artist’s exchange at Carnegie Mellon University. At the end of her program, she said, “my kids wanted to stay. We were in a position where we could. Pittsburgh is a really cool place. I think it is a land of opportunity, untapped in so many ways.”
She told me that before she got that letter.