Bart and the Deal, part 2

Developer Bart Blatstein says his proposed upscale artists community is just what Northern Liberties needs. Many residents think he’s naïve and possibly a threat.

by Daniel Brook

photographs by Kass Mencher



Artist-in-residence: Ira Upin wonders whether Bart knows art.

part 1 | part 2

Even among his local supporters, Blatstein’s plans aren’t producing much excitement. Most say Liberties Walk is better than a vacant lot — hardly a ringing endorsement of the plans.

"It’s the best we could get," says Ray King, a local resident and artist. "Let’s face it, the Guggenheim isn’t bringing Frank Gehry in to build a new museum here."

It is odd how much agreement there is between those who support Blatstein’s plans and those who do not. This broad-based agreement allows Larry Friedman, who chairs the Northern Liberties zoning committee, to say, "We all stand behind Bart and hope it works. When I say ‘all,’ I mean a general consensus." Indeed, when Northern Liberties residents are asked whether they support the Liberties Walk project, most say they do. But what is interesting is that both the supporters and opponents have similar criticisms of the project; they just disagree on whether the problems outweigh the benefits.

Blatstein describes his development as an "artists community," but few believe artists will be able to afford Liberties Walk apartments. In a neighborhood with skyrocketing property values, where a studio apartment rents for what a house did less than a decade ago, Blatstein says his development will charge whatever the market will bear.

It is not entirely clear what that will be, and Blatstein himself refuses to give an estimate. Dick Tucker of Tucker Realty Corp. owns several Old City apartments, but says "I don’t know what the market rate is up there" in Northern Liberties. Since Blatstein’s project is unprecedented, and not yet built, Tucker said it would be hard to guess a figure. Mark Wildstein, who owns 17 units in Northern Liberties, was also unsure. "He’s going to create something brand-new that’s going to be nicer than anything else in the neighborhood," he says. That being the case, it would be difficult to compare his units to existing properties. Blatstein’s plans call for simple designs, but since the development will be brand new and come complete with a major retail strip, they should be among the priciest in the area. The lofts and townhouses will likely be too expensive for most artists to afford.

Blatstein counters that there are artists who can afford upscale housing. "Isn’t Mick Jagger an artist?" he asks rhetorically. But even supporters of Liberties Walk, like Robert Roque, think it’s much more likely to house yuppies than artists. "I don’t think a rich artist would move to Northern Liberties; they’d move to New York City," he says.

Initially Blatstein hoped that artists would be able to apply for grants that would help them rent the live-work spaces. As artists knew all along and Blatstein soon learned, such funding does not exist.

"I’m not aware of any sort of a grant program that would reimburse artists for living space," said Tom Nordyke of Artspace Projects Inc., a Minneapolis-based nonprofit which helps artists renovate and move into abandoned buildings. On a recent trip to Philadelphia, Nordyke toured the Liberties Walk site with Blatstein. "We ran into some people when we were wandering around. Clearly, Bart had talked to community members," says Nordyke approvingly. Still, the central question, says Nordyke, was "How do you marry the true interests of the artists with the interests of a for-profit developer? How Bart’s going to reconcile that is obviously the key."

At the time of the meeting, Nordyke says, Blatstein had not yet decided whether to charge market rents on all the units. Since the meeting, Blatstein, now aware that artists will not be able to get grants to live in Liberties Walk, has said he’s committed to charging market rents for the entire development. "It’s a private development, not a subsidized development," said Blatstein. Artists once dismissed Blatstein’s ideas about grant funding as naive; now they dismiss them as disingenuous.



	Neighborhood watch: Sue White is suspicious of the outside developer.

Regardless of whether artists will actually be able to live in Liberties Walk, many locals find the whole idea of an outside developer building an "artists community" patronizing. As Sue White of the Northern Liberties Arts Association puts it, "He says he’s going to create this artists community, but there already is an artists community."

Another artist, Marita Fitzpatrick, who recently bought a house in an adjoining neighborhood — having been priced out of Northern Liberties — wished Blatstein would just build some middle-class housing. "Artists don’t want stuff like that," she says, referring to Blatstein’s sketches. "We’re not a circus act."

Within the arts community, there is a general objection to the development on aesthetic grounds. Even residents who say that the development is good for the neighborhood cannot contain their artistic judgment. Blatstein’s presented full-color sketches of Liberties Walk in a carefully scripted presentation to the neighborhood zoning committee. In Blatstein’s sketches, red brick buildings are draped in flashy banners. The decorations were supposed to represent the work of artist-residents, who Blatstein says will have a role in designing their apartments’ exteriors. Those in attendance later mocked Blatstein’s banners as "doodads," "tchotchkes" and "junk." A number of local artists referred to the plans as "Disney-esque," alluding to Disneyland’s red-brick-and-banners Main Street USA.

Ira Upin, who supports Blatstein’s development, says the sketches Blatstein displayed depicted a development that "no artist would be caught dead in." Acknowledging the criticism, Blatstein insists that artists living in the development can decorate the buildings in a less Main Street USA manner. Fitzpatrick regards the whole idea that artists will be involved in designs as "a gimmick."

Blatstein insists the banners in the sketches are just examples of what could be done. If the artists living in the development wanted to do something different, they’d be free to. Since "nothing’s etched in stone, there’s nothing to critique," he says. Opponents of the development see this as a cop-out from a man who badly misjudged his audience.

To his harshest critics, even the overwhelmingly applauded plans to convert a vacant 151-year-old church into an arts center expose Blatstein’s ignorance of the arts. Sue White claims Blatstein’s plan to use the ground floor of the building for gallery space and the second floor for performances underscored that the developer was an arts neophyte. With no elevator planned for the building, White pointed out, each piece of scenery would have to be lugged up a flight of stairs. While this is the kind of problem Blatstein would quickly remedy if it were pointed out to him, the scorn remains.

Whatever locals think of Liberties Walk or its developer, nearly everyone hopes the project will finally persuade bigger businesses to open up in Northern Liberties. To many, this is the only benefit of having a wealthy outside developer come into the neighborhood. In the past few years, the burgeoning artist population has brought in new restaurants and cafes. But even with the new businesses, a lack of basic services remains. Complaints that there is no supermarket are universal, bringing new meaning to the term "starving artist." Residents either drive to other parts of the city to shop or get gouged by local bodegas.

Blatstein is aware of the problem: "You can’t get a quart of milk in that neighborhood; you can’t rent a tape." But while Blatstein would ultimately like to bring in a supermarket to Northern Liberties, the accomplished strip-mall developer has yet to succeed.

Even those who support Blatstein’s Liberties Walk plan are disappointed that it won’t immediately bring in the businesses that the neighborhood needs most. Robert Roque, who has lived in Northern Liberties for five years and calls Blatstein’s development "a very positive thing for the neighborhood," complained that "we need amenities, not coffee shops. We need a good food market."

Some critics of Liberties Walk not only doubt that it will bring in the needed services, but question whether the retail portion of the development will even succeed. With the packed gallery scene a few blocks south in Old City, many speculate that the city’s art market is already saturated. They think Blatstein’s plan to add 35 new galleries to the city shows just how little he knows about the Philadelphia art world.

Blatstein contends that under his expansive definition of art, there is room in the city for new galleries. Blatstein hopes the Liberties Walk storefronts will host artisans working in metal, leather and wood. As Blatstein puts it, "There are easily a dozen categories of art. We could take two from each category." That would fill 24 of the 35 gallery spaces.

One Northern Liberties artist described Blatstein as "either conniving or naive." The truth, perhaps, is that he is a little of each.

With his Liberties Walk development Blatstein hopes to do good and do well, but not necessarily in that order. Blatstein seems sincere about wanting to make the neighborhood better; it’s just that his definition of urban improvement differs from that of many Northern Liberties residents. The developer and the artists live in such different worlds that, even with good intentions, it is hard for them to see eye-to-eye.

Blatstein describes his efforts to build new housing and bring in basic amenities to Northern Liberties as nothing short of "heroic." But while locals appreciate his desire to bring services to the neighborhood, many resent the way he presents himself as "the savior of the neighborhood." Indeed, Blatstein describes his development plans in Northern Liberties as "going into a neighborhood that looks terrible and is terrible." Local residents couldn’t disagree more. Despite the lack of certain services, most wouldn’t consider living anywhere else.

When Blatstein says he "loves" Northern Liberties, he is referring to the feeling of community in the neighborhood, a feeling he grew up with and misses today amid the orderly affluence of the suburbs. When he calls Northern Liberties a "terrible neighborhood," he is reacting to its decrepit buildings, overgrown sidewalks and lack of a Blockbuster video — things he knows he can help fix, but also the things which made the neighborhood affordable, even appealing, to artists in the first place. As Marita Fitzpatrick puts it, "He wants to turn Northern Liberties into something like Main Street in Manayunk. We want authenticity."

Whatever its flaws, Liberties Walk should become a reality soon. Blatstein expects to break ground on New Year’s Day. Since the deal is self-financed and has no zoning problems, there should be no hold-ups. The developer says he welcomes further input from the arts community.

It is no coincidence that Blatstein’s first foray into mixed-use development will be built in Philadelphia’s foremost artists’ neighborhood. In building this project, Blatstein fancies himself something of an artist. "I was interested in doing something really creative," he said. "This is my canvas." But while the first sketches of most Northern Liberties artists languish in their parents’ attics, Blatstein’s first opus will soon be on permanent display.

part 1 | part 2