15 years ago, we bet on creatives to revitalize York. Here’s why we need to double down

In the recent column published in the York Sunday News titled “York County creatives provide vital arts element to community life,” author Jim McClure highlights the measurable growth of arts and culture in York, and traces that growth back to a recommendation by Urban Planner David Rusk in his 2002 “Rusk Report” to revitalize our county and urban core by growing our creative class. Jim notes in his piece that this growth is in spite of our community not implementing David Rusk’s recommendations to fund it with public tax dollars.  So how did we get here? It’s not a coincidence; several key investments have built York County into an attractor of the creative class.  Below is a timeline of some of the biggest bets York made.

1800-2000: Building a community of makers

As Jim pointed out in his article, York and the creative class go way back. It is why York Art Association founded in 1905 is still thriving. The York Academy of Arts drew talented fine arts students to York City when it opened its doors in 1952.  Artists came together in 1990 to create YorkArts, now Creative York, as a way to bring art out into the community. From their anchor point at 10 North Beaver Street downtown, other creative businesses popped up and Beaver Street district flourished. West of the Codorus artist studios, coffee shops and marketing firms began setting up around Penn Market. Seeing this organic growth, the City of York developed a plan to incentivize creatives putting down roots.

2008: York City Artist Homestead Program

Backed by a mere $50,000, York City’s Artist Homestead program allowed artists to obtain a forgivable loan of up to $5,000 to help subsidize the purchase of property in York City. Before the program burned through its budget, 12 artists were subsidized and set up live/work spaces including Maryland metalworking artists Pat Sells and Casey Tyrell. They relocated to York to set up a 26,000 square foot workshop for their business Salvaging Creativity.  As written in a 2015 article in Belt Magazine on the program, “Salvaging Creativity’s industrial welded work quickly became a signature of the city’s new aesthetic. Their work is everywhere: a bar installation in a local eatery, a charter school sign, baseball stadium adornments, benches, playgrounds, and public sculptures.”  They literally changed the aesthetic of our city.

2011: A ‘royal’ new arts district

In 2010, after building a relationship with property developer Josh Hankey, a group of young artists formed the non-profit artist collective, The Parliament. Along with Kings Courtyard Artist Collective, these two galleries became the catalyst for what is now Royal Square District. It is now home to 17 arts-related businesses, seven restaurants and nightlife destinations, and 28 large-scale mural installations.

2013: Artspace study and a downtown development boom

Inspired by the success of the Artist Homestead Program, the City of York and the Cultural Alliance approached Artspace, a national leader of artist housing to execute a feasibility study on developing affordable housing for artists.  Artspace launched a market study within a 75-mile radius of York City in January 2014, and performed a comprehensive site study of the following vacant properties:

- Keystone Colorworks Building

- The Woolworth Building

- One Marketway West Building

- Bond Sanitation Building

York was approved for a 52-unit housing development for artists-that was more units than approved for Seattle or Pittsburgh. Due to funding, none of these locations became designated artist-only housing. But because of the results listed in the Artspace study, every one of these locations was re-developed as residential/creative commercial space. 98 upscale market-rate apartments were added to York’s walkable downtown bringing new residents to York City through these revitalized properties, and The Bond became an anchor for events in Royal Square.

2015: Building a virtual arts & culture hub

With an initial investment from the Women’s Giving Circle of the York County Community Foundation, the Cultural Alliance of York County set out to create an online platform with two objectives: Promote our artists and cultural offerings through a free events calendar, and syndicate content to other regional calendars to reduce duplication and administrative time. On January 1, 2016, we launched York365.com to highlight York’s cultural amenities and artists. Today, York365.com has 32,000 visitors per year, features 200 arts & culture events, and hosts 225 active artist profiles.  York365.com also powers 18 community calendars, so arts events big and small are listed across these county-wide connection points automatically.

2020: The pandemic and a creative comeback

As COVID-19 shut down all programming and canceled gatherings across the world, York’s creative class was on the front lines. The sector saw a 60% decrease in income in the first 3 months.  Without the recommended public/private funding mix that David Rusk recommended back in 2002, the creative class lacked funds to sustain operations until they could re-open their centers and studios.  Thanks to the joint efforts of the County of York, York County Economic Alliance, and the Cultural Alliance, $1.65 million in CARES and ARPA funding were deployed to our cultural attractions to sustain them until variants eased, and the Cultural Alliance began distributing grants directly to artists to help them build their skills and their businesses up again. York is one of the few counties that saw no permanent closures of our cultural amenities due to the pandemic, and we rebounded must faster than national trends.

2002-2022: Time to double-down and implement Rusk’s recommendation

The need to create a sustainable pool of funding to support the development and marketing of all of York county’s regional assets became a directive in the 10-year York County Economic Action Plan released in 2020. “Ensuring a vibrant arts, culture, and recreation ecosystem requires adequate funding to create new attractions, maintain existing operations, and support local and regional marketing.”

A key recommendation of the action plan was to conduct a study of York’s regional quality of place assets and study other communities making significant public investments to help us build a roadmap of how York can better support these assets. The Cultural and Outdoor Asset report by consultants Fourth Economy was released in late 2022, and mapped 208 cultural and outdoor amenities throughout York, the economic impact they have on their surrounding neighborhoods, and a comparison of six communities around the country that invest public funds into their creative class to help inform how we can implement it in York. That plan is beginning to take shape, led by local community leaders and stakeholders.

We’ve come full circle back to the point Jim McClure astutely made in his column; David Rusk’s recommendation to invest in the creative class in York was the foundation for the vital arts we have in York today. But instead of putting all the chips down back in 2002 as many cities did, we worked with smaller stacks and had to grow slowly in fits and starts. Thanks to strong community partners, collaborations, good old York ingenuity, and an arts community that punches above its weight, our creative class has been a solid bet for growing York’s quality of place. With public investment, just imagine what our creatives can do when there’s not a stacked deck and one arm tied behind their backs.

I’m willing to bet on it.

See full timeline on the history of the creative class in York at http://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/phGwCZ6G2Viovz7YDuzLt_9?domain=culturalyork.org

Kelley Gibson is president of the Cultural Alliance of York County.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Here’s How creatives have help revitalize York, Pa.