Corridors in Flux: Could Waters Avenue become a living, working hub for artists, entrepreneurs?

This story is part of a larger series looking at changing commercial corridors in Savannah

Jerome Meadows chose his studio on Waters Avenue because it reminded the native New Yorker of home.

"There was a lot of gunfire. What was interesting is that all of that, while not necessarily appealing, was familiar," the sculptor and painter said. "All of my studios — except for one exception — have been in neighborhoods like this. I grew up like this."

Meadows was referring to the Eastside community he's lived and worked in for nearly 20 years, a former ice factory on the corner of Waters Avenue and East Waldburg Street. The corridor is mostly residential, but anchored by businesses and churches before turning into Savannah's medical hub in Midtown.

It took three years (his neighbors thought his studio was a "SCAD enterprise"), but Meadows finally was welcomed into the community. He would walk his dog, Cloud, along the cracked sidewalks. Neighborhood kids would peek into his studio, the door thrown open during the summer, while Meadows worked.

Now, as property values begin to creep up around the block and demographics begin shifting, Meadows believes Waters Avenue is the place for imaginative evolution.

"My perception of this is that — and you'll understand my bias — Waters Avenue is primed to become an artist hub. But when I say that, I'm speaking more in terms of studio space, living and workspaces," Meadows said. "There's enough galleries and museums over on the west side of town. The artists whose work would end up in those spaces... need a place to live and work."

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Art and commerce

Meadows isn't the first to dream up a community or corridor for the arts in Savannah, but his idea is one that melds community and commerce to create a hub where artists live, teach and learn from their residential neighbors.

"The small-scale intimacy of Waters Avenue would be ideal for that," Meadows said. "And the reaction of the local neighbors, to me as an artist, suggests that it would be and it can be and it should be a nice fit."

Meadows gave a tour of the area to prospective developers and business owners to broach the idea, and has been working with the city to learn more about the tax incentives offered in the area, which is labeled as an Enterprise Zone.

"It's a prime location as an arts corridor, but again, not in terms of glitz and glamour. But nuts and bolts," Meadows explained. Because of that, he fears the programs the city offers will exclude many of those he hopes to help.

The investment requirements a business must have to qualify for the tax abatements are higher than an artist or small studio would be able to afford, and the business owners who could take advantage of those programs might jumpstart gentrification, instead of revitalization.

A few blocks down the street from Meadow Lark Studio, Vann Seales owns and operates Studio 13 (formerly known as 13 Bricks), a screen printing and design studio at the corner of Waters Avenue and 40th Street.

He looked into applying for the city's tax abatements when he purchased the art deco-style building he now operates out of, but found his business was too small to qualify.

"It's not structured in a way where it actually helps the people it needs to. It's helping corporate interests and people who have established businesses basically have first dibs at tax breaks on their property."

The state tax abatement program for Enterprise Zones requires an investment of five-times the property's purchase value and the creation of at least five jobs during the first decade of operation. In return, participants pay no property taxes for the first five years and all development fees — like water hookup — are waived. The program is run out the Dept. of Community Affairs and has rigid guidelines for which areas qualify, and what incentives can be offered.

But Seales sees the potential on Waters Avenue. He said heirs property issues and developer interest in the area has led to widespread house-flipping, and property values are shooting up.

"I mean, it's textbook gentrification. But at the same time, we have an opportunity to kind of guide it," Seales said. "And so, that's why I've been trying to put out the bat signal so that young entrepreneurs, specifically, can take advantage of it."

The price of entry

Seales, a Savannah native, sees the inevitably of gentrification coming east and overtaking Waters Avenue. He's urging homeowners not to sell off their properties, and for entrepreneurs to move there, ahead of big investments that will make the price of entry unaffordable for small businesses and artists.

Between Wheaton Street and Victory Drive, Waters Avenue properties are selling at vastly different price points, signs of properties flipping from blighted lots sold for $8,000, to renovated 1900s home that have quadrupled in price since 2011. A number of commercial spaces sit vacant and run down.

Seales' studio was once a barber shop and a grocery store. "I've had people who've come up to me and be like, 'Oh, you know, my family had a church in here at one point.'"

Waters Café, a new restaurant venture from Starlandia owner Clinton Edminster, has prompted both optimism and fear with its forthcoming opening.

Panhandle Slim, a folk artist local to Savannah, hung up signs along Waters Avenue this summer warning residents that the area might soon gentrify as Bull Street in Starland did, a neighborhood that once was a major block of downtown Savannah's Black community and is now an epicenter for retail, restaurants and housing.

Slim's signs — canary yellow with thick, black writing — included a quote from Civil Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hammer: "Urban Renewal is Negro Removal."

Urban Renewal was the 1960s government program that razed West Broad Street and hundreds of Black businesses, churches and homes to create the I-16 ramp and flyover. The road is now Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

But Seales believes that knowledge is power, and the growing interest in Waters Avenue is something to leverage, not resist.

"It's not unlike if there's a meteor coming to crash into Earth. Let's not pretend like there isn't one. Let's prepare for it and try to take it. Try to position ourselves where we're not completely screwed. I refuse to embrace the victim mentality," he said.

Zoe is the Savannah Morning News' Investigative Reporter. Find her at znicholson@gannett.com, @zoenicholson_ on Twitter, and @zoenicholsonreporter on Instagram. 

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah's Waters Ave. envisioned as live-work hub for artists