Connor Dolan used to paint in an oven. Or at least that’s what it felt like last summer working in a 12-by-20-foot converted storage unit in north Broward with no air conditioning, light or running water.
When he moved back to South Florida from Missouri a year ago after graduating college, he scrolled endlessly online searching through warehouse listings for a reasonably priced space to work on his art. But the pickings were slim. There are some art complexes in Miami, but he was stuck on wait lists. One spot he found in Doral was cheap but was shared with a car mechanic.
In his $560-a-month Broward studio, the oppressive heat radiated through the metal roof. His poor little portable AC machine didn’t stand a chance.
“I was just suffering there for the whole summer,” he said. “But that’s all I could find.”
While Miamians have felt the squeeze of rising rents as South Florida roils from an ongoing, well-documented housing crisis, many local artists, from early career to well-established, have struggled to keep up with paying two rents: one for a place to live and another for a place to work.
Similarly to how residential rental rates increased dramatically post-pandemic, the local industrial real estate market saw a boost in prices. According to reports from real estate company JLL, the price per square foot of industrial space has increased by about 26% over the last two years.
Working from home isn’t an option for some artists. There are bulky supplies, harsh chemicals or industrial materials you don’t want near your kids. Ceramicists can’t keep high fire kilns in their bedrooms. Metal workers can’t weld in their living rooms. And, above all, artists stress how vital it is to work among other artists.
While the issue of rising rents is certainly not exclusive to artists, the local arts community has been sounding the alarm on how dwindling affordable studio space and limited affordable housing pushes talent away from a cultural hub they helped build.
As a result, artists have had to do what artists do best: get creative. They are pooling their resources, exploring neighborhoods, renting residential properties -- anything they can just to find a place to work. And some local arts organizations with the means have taken affordable housing into their own hands to help their artists cope with rising costs.
REAL ESTATE WOES
The competition to snag a free or affordable studio in Miami is fierce.
Bakehouse Art Complex, a Wynwood nonprofit that offers subsidized studio space, has a waiting list of a couple hundred people. Last year, about 300 artists applied for just six free studios at Oolite Arts, a Miami Beach nonprofit. And options for artists became even fewer two years ago when Fountainhead Studios, a Little River warehouse of studio space run by nonprofit Fountainhead Arts, closed after 15 years. The building, which the nonprofit did not own, was slated for demolition to make way for a mixed-use development. “There are so many people that are not even on our radar that are either working out of their homes or have given up the idea of being an artist because they had to get a job to stay here or they moved away,” said Cathy Leff, the Bakehouse director.
Bakehouse and Oolite bought property decades ago, but some artist studio organizations are tenants who have to negotiate rents with landlords, Leff said. Now is a tricky time to do that.
“If you rent a studio or housing, it’s the same situation,” she said. “If a landowner owns a piece of property and it’s worth so much, it’s only out of charity or generosity or if they have nothing to do with the land that they let people use it below market rates.”
That’s the situation Laundromat Art Space is in. Located in Little Haiti, the building is a charming, repurposed laundromat that houses 14 resident artists’ studios. Co-founder and executive director Ronald Sánchez said he works to keep rents reasonable, ranging from $400 to $900 depending on unit size.
If the units weren’t subsidized, Sánchez estimated rent for a medium-sized studio would be $1,000.
Sánchez was among a group of artists who established Laundromat in 2015. Before Laundromat, he shared a large space with another artist in Wynwood until that rent got too high. The two artists used to split the $3,500 rent, a relatively low figure that is “impossible now,” Sánchez said. “There’s no way that’s feasible anymore.”
Laundromat’s future hung in the balance in 2022 when the building went up for auction. Luckily, Sánchez said, an art collector he has a good relationship with bought it with his development firm. If a different developer got their hands on the property, Laundromat may have closed for good.
But it’s a race against time, he said. “I’m trying to maintain the studios as subsidized for as long as I can. At the end of the day, developers want to make money.” Yuval Ofir, founder of creative group Yo Miami, said he’s skeptical of how some developers use marketing tactics to “brand” neighborhoods as up-and-coming or artistic to attract tenants.
“Unfortunately, the people who are in control are the developers who don’t actually have a vested interest in the community within the neighborhoods that they’re developing,” he said. “Once the luster of the place dies off, like you could argue is happening in Wynwood, they’ve moved on to the next neighborhood.”
Ofir saw the need for affordable studio space twelve years ago when he retrofitted an old Little Haiti warehouse his parents owned into artist studio spaces. In the early days, studio rents at Yo Space ranged from $250 to $400. Today, those rents are about $700.
“I’m trying to find that balance of still offering reasonable prices compared to the market, but also being conscious of needing to make a profit,” he said.
OLD PROBLEMS, NEW SPACES
Pangea Kali Virga, an artist and designer, worked in her Fountainhead studio for about four years. It was spacious, affordable at $600 a month and beneficial to her career. She made connections, got job opportunities and secured commissions from folks who visited the studio complex.
“None of my work would be possible if it wasn’t for my studio space,” she said.
When Virga learned the complex was closing, she tried to establish an artist cooperative and though the idea didn’t pan out, she did gain some insights from artists who showed interest. In an informal survey of 50 artists, 40 said they could afford up to $500 in monthly studio rent.
When she looked for studios, the options were limited. She recalled one space that was a third of the size of her old studio for double the price. It made more sense to rent a second apartment to use as a studio. For $1,800, Virga rents a 800-square-foot, two bedroom unit in Little River to create her art, organize her materials, meet with clients and plan programming.
“It was really crazy to me,” Virga said about looking for studios. “I personally don’t see how the art industry is going to be tenable in the following years for artists here.”
Searching for adequate work space was a bit like Goldilocks’ journey for the artists of Third Space Studios, Miami’s newest artist collective. The artists — Diego Alejandro Waisman, Melina Tsalikis, John Dominic Colon and JD Zuluaga — decided to share a space after wrapping up graduate school at Florida International University instead of renting studios on their own.
Realtors that showed them different locations didn’t quite understand what the group was looking for, Waisman said. Some places didn’t have air conditioning, bathrooms or parking spaces. One spot in Opa-Locka was completely gutted, riddled with electrical violations and had a hole in the floor. After a year of scouting out places in between classes, the group finally found its home: a 1,100-square-foot space for $2,400 a month in an Allapattah strip mall. It was just right.
Third Space Studios opened just three months ago. The space is so new, they don’t have a sign out front or partitions inside. Each artists’ space is delineated by blue painter’s tape on the floor. In the future, Third Space hopes to be a hub for artists to create, share art and hang out.
“The city needs more spaces, not less spaces,” Waisman said. “Hopefully we can expand and invite more artists.” Meanwhile, in Little Havana, a group of artists flourishes underground. Tunnel Projects, an aptly named studio and project space in a shopping plaza’s underground parking garage, offers low-rent studios to 11 artists.
Among them is Conner Dolan, who finally found a studio with both air conditioning and a community.
”Everyone works together here,” he said. “As corny as it is to say, it’s really wonderful.”
Like Third Space, Tunnel was born out of necessity. Co-founder Luna Palazzolo was looking for a cheaper option after she could no longer afford rent at her previous studio space. She and three other artists rented the tucked-away units, built their own partition walls and split the rent for $160 each.
The group worked with the landlord to rent more spaces in the 1980s building to provide emerging artists with some of the most affordable studios in the city and a project space to exhibit work. Dolan’s 300-square-foot space is $450 a month, which is half of what he thought would be a good deal.
“It’s already very hard to survive as a person and live with dignity,” Palazzolo said. “Artists, we will always accommodate. But we shouldn’t be suffering.”
‘WE COLLECTIVELY NEED TO TACKLE THIS’
Ask any artist, curator or arts administrator what the solution to this dual problem is, and they’ll say the same thing.
“There’s not a single, silver bullet,” Waisman said. “There has to be something done about the cost of living if [Miami] wants to have an arts scene.”
Some local arts organizations have set out to address affordability with projects of their own. Bakehouse has been working on adding affordable housing to its Wynwood property. The process has been yearslong and complicated, Leff said, but it’s worth it.
“It’s an interesting opportunity for Bakehouse to really be a model of a not-for-profit that was able to, at one point, acquire a piece of land and then evolve to remain relevant and serve the needs of the community it was founded to serve,” Leff said. “I’m optimistic. I don’t think I would continue this if I wasn’t optimistic.”
Last year, Miami Beach officials worked with Miami City Ballet to break ground on an 80-unit apartment building to provide affordable housing for artists, dancers, ballet staff, firefighters and officers. Construction will finish by next spring, said Juan José Escalante, the Miami City Ballet executive director.
But Leff and Escalante both stressed the need for public and private sectors to work on the problem together.
“As a cultural anchor for Miami-Dade County, we’re taking it very seriously. We’re looking for solutions, but we’re having this conversation on all kinds of levels,” Escalante said. “We collectively need to tackle this. It can’t be two organizations doing something.”
This story was produced with financial support from The Pérez Family Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
