Tallahassee Tea Party

"More proof that there are too many hogs at the tax trough.  The City of Tallahassee is paying lobbyists to beg for Arts Grants.  The City has not even calculated the "cary cost" of this property and the John's Building.  Government must get out of the way and let the market determine the future of Gaines Street.  Arts Projects should be privately funded."  Pace

Article published Jan 21, 2008  -  Tallahassee Democrat
Survey shows high artist interest in Arts on Gaines
Officials: Project looks good on paper but financing an issue
By Julian Pecquet
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

For the past decade, wood-carving artist Steve Fox has been using his Brookwood Drive basement as a creative workshop.

But he says he'd be ready to give it up to move into a proposed development where artists would live, work and exhibit their creations, a place where they could share their views on everything from art to marketing.

"A place like Arts on Gaines would be interesting because it would be a community," Fox said. "Right now, we're scattered all over the city and the county."

Fox is vice-chairman of a committee formed four years ago to look into creating a space for artists. He is among dozens of artists interested in moving to the site, which would mix affordable housing with studio workspace.

Proponents say it would help revitalize Gaines Street, and they're hoping results from a recent survey will convince Tallahassee leaders to turn over a 4.5-acre, city-owned parcel at Gaines and Gay streets.

But city redevelopment officials, who have been counting on businesses to build retail space on Gaines Street, received a $4.1 million offer for the site on Thursday from a residential developer. And city officials don't know how much support it can offer because of anticipated budget cuts.

"We need to make a decision soon, just for everyone's sake," said City Commissioner Mark Mustian.

The survey, commissioned by the Council on Culture and Arts, was completed by 332 artists. It showed that half are interested in relocating to a multi-purpose arts facility. About two-thirds expressed interest in renting studio or workspace.

"The responses were incredible," said Peggy Brady, the council's executive director. "It really solidifies what this group of citizens has been doing for the past three years working towards this point."

Based on the survey, Minneapolis-based nonprofit Artspace, a national leader in real-estate development for the arts, is proposing up to 55 affordable-housing units and 30 studio spaces.

Artspace is set to present the survey's findings 7-9 p.m. Tuesday at the Marriott Residence Inn at Gaines Street and Railroad Avenue. Earlier that day, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will make an announcement regarding a grant request for the project. COCA is seeking a $225,000 grant to help get the project going.

"There's been conversation now for 20-some years about turning Gaines Street into an arts and entertainment district," said Mike Pate, the foundation's local program director and former publisher of the Tallahassee Democrat . "What we have now is some things actually coming to fruition."

Proponents say Artspace can be built within three years. It would include an "incubator" space to house the Boys' Choir of Tallahassee and the Tallahassee Ballet. It would also have rehearsal space for rent and performance/convention space for 300 to 500 people.

The project's cost isn't known, but COCA expects to have to raise at least several million dollars from the private sector. COCA also hopes to get a $100,000 grant from the Legislature.

It's also not clear how much might be paid for the site. Local governments in most communities have turned over land for a symbolic $1, said Wendy Holmes, vice president of consulting and resource development for Artspace.

Artspace, with work in 15 states, has completed 21 projects. It has 13 in the works, including Arts on Gaines. Artspace projects have helped redevelop communities, from Pittsburg to Buffalo, NY., Holmes said. The latest project, in Broward County, opened last weekend. Its 37 units are already full, and 200 artists are waiting to get in.

"Artists can help to be catalysts for economic development," Holmes said. "They're willing to be pioneers and go to areas that other people wouldn't consider, because they're so desperate for space, and they end up making an area hip and desirable."

The site at Gaines and Gay streets is considered ideal because of its proximity to the warehouses, workshops and galleries at Railroad Square arts park. The two sites could be linked with a pedestrian bridge.

"In combination with Railroad Square and this project, we now will have a cultural district," Brady said.

However, some still have questions and concerns.

Mustian said the project looked good on paper, but if Artspace isn't ready to make a large payment for the site, the city will have to find money elsewhere for planned Gaines Street road improvements.

"The demand (for Artspace) seems to be solid," Mustian said. "It's just in this budget climate, do we have the resources to subsidize it to the exclusion of other things?"

Atlanta-based residential and student-housing developer Cortland Partners has offered $4.1 million for the site at Gaines and Gay. The city bought it in 2004 for $3.5 million.

Even if the site isn't made available, Brady said, the community will come up with an alternative place for Arts on Gaines.

"We have absolutely no reason to think that this is not — after the survey, after all the due diligence that's been done — a project that this community needs and wants," she said. "It's going to happen."

·  Contact reporter Julian Pecquet at (850) 599-2307 or jjpecquet@tallahassee.com

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"Spending more is not the solution.  Diane's letter is more proof of the fact that we have too many taxtakers on the public teet.  Florida State University, B.S., 1979, J.D., 1983."  Pace

Tallahassee Democrat - Jan 18, 2008
In education, we get what we pay for
Diane Roberts
My View

Former state university chancellor Charlie Reed liked to say, "Florida has a motto: We're cheap and proud of it."

That's not cheap as in inexpensive: that's cheap as in tawdry, low-rent, lousy, poor-quality. Higher education in Florida is coming apart at the seams. We rank at the bottom in per-pupil spending: below Georgia, below North Carolina, below just about everybody but hurricane-torn Louisiana. Our student-teacher ratio — a major criterion in educational efficacy — comes in 96th out of the top 100 universities. Our faculty salaries languish in the basement third of research institutions. Worse still, what we pay the graduate students who teach undergraduates all day, every day while taking classes themselves and trying to write their dissertations is a pittance, at, or a fraction above, the federal poverty level. What do they live on, cat food?

On opening day of last year's legislative session, House Speaker Marco Rubio promised to create a "world-class education system" in Florida. This is rather like George W. Bush in 2000 pledging to restore integrity to the White House. Boy, it sounded good at the time, yet somehow the result turns out to be the exact opposite.

Rubio is an ambitious parvenu who wants to be governor of Florida — for starters, at least. He casts himself in the mold of Jeb Bush, the self-styled "education governor" who did everything he could to destroy public education in Florida with school vouchers, the brain-dead FCAT, and declining real appropriations for universities. The $14 billion in tax cuts for Jeb's rich friends didn't help, either. As Sandy D'Alemberte, a former legislator and erstwhile president of Florida State University, pointed out in the Democrat on Jan. 11, Jeb Bush and his legislative minions also made sure that the Hummer-sized loopholes in corporate income tax remained wide open.

Rubio has drunk the Kool-Aid: Somehow he thinks a "world-class education system" is possible in a state with a regressive taxation system, a deepening budget sinkhole, cut-price tuition, and ticked-off professors. Perhaps he believes that the elimination of summer classes, the abolition of whole departments, and firing of more than 100 faculty and staff at FSU (as Provost Larry Abele warns could happen) will miraculously turn the university into a top-tier intellectual powerhouse.

Perhaps the lion will lie down with the lamb, the Shia will embrace the Sunni, Rush Limbaugh will endorse Hillary Clinton, and the Magnet Lab will find a way to transform lead into gold, too.

Far more probable is that Florida students will take five or six years to graduate because they can't get the classes they need. If they get in, that is. Many will find that admissions have been frozen or cut back so much that they'll be lucky to get accepted to cosmetology school. The upside would be that FSU, FAMU, UF and USF would become so selective that Harvard and Princeton would be proud to take our rejects. Teaching at the Athens of the sub-tropics might be fun, but such academic elitism is antithetical to the open and democratic mission of our state universities.

Say, by some miracle, a student does get a class at FSU. It will be overcrowded, and the instructor too overwhelmed to give much individual attention. Students will be used to that by then: They will have mostly been taught by those malnourished grad students, seeing a full professor about as often as ornithologists spot ivory-billed woodpeckers in Tate's Hell. And when they finally get out of college, the jobs available will be in the service sector ("Supersize that for you, sir?") because the high-wage, high-tech industries Florida politicians are always declaring they will deliver refuse to relocate to a state where education is an afterthought.

Florida universities are often called "a bargain." Tuition is low: half what Texas' research universities charge, one-third what they charge at the University of Michigan. Of course, you get what you pay for. Florida's cheap. Y'all still proud?

·  Diane Roberts is a commentator for NPR and a professor of English and creative writing at Florida State University. Contact her at dkroberts@fsu.edu.

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