In 2015 an unlikely crew—artists, developer, coffee-shop owner—forged an alliance to buy a historic building in Pioneer Square. We dubbed it the Good Arts Building, in an homage to the “Good Eats Cafeteria” that once occupied it, and also as a statement of their purpose. Since its inception, Pioneer Square has historically been home to the performing and visual arts. During economic down-times, artists have snatched up cheap warehouse space, while scrappy black-box theatres claimed dilapidated storefronts, revitalizing the neighborhood in the process. Artists, theatres, art galleries and small quirky businesses have given the neighborhood its identity and “vibrancy” as they say nowadays. The Good Arts Building was founded so that these creators of cultural and economic value could stick around to reap the benefits.

Our model for sustainability harvests the synergy of the complementary businesses that occupy the building: the studio artists attract attendees to exhibitions and events; those attendees patronize the restaurants and shops. A guy who comes in for a haircut buys a vintage suit and has it tailored, all without leaving the building. Part of the coffeehouse doubles as a gallery, bringing interest to the restaurant and income to the artists.

The arts were infused into every corner, raising the foot traffic and the value of the location, while the rents of the studios remained affordable to creative small businesses, yet sustainable for the building. Over the past five years, work spaces for artists have alarmingly disappeared across the city: In the same period, Good Arts added 14 studios to ’57 Biscayne’s existing 14, plus a street-level arcade of maker and micro-retail spaces.

Making space for the arts turned out to be a good business decision. The art studio tenants have paid rent in full every month of the pandemic, and helped us get through the year.

A boutique guest rental for overnight stays supplements our revenues. Moreover, a model of 100% occupancy, rather than the traditional 80%, along with the creative use of underutilized spaces, has allowed us to  pay our bills while still maintaining affordability.

In 2017, we combined our three corner storefronts to create a new anchor location for Cherry Street Coffee House, with a stunning remodel by Atelier Drome architects. That same year, we converted a neighboring long-vacant storefront into Good Arts Arcade, consisting of four boutique-sized retail spaces that open on to a central gallery, currently occupied by a bespoke tailor, hair design studio, and a perfumerie.

We also gave the exterior its first paint job in over twenty years, with a new color scheme designed by the resident artists. Customized steel flower basket hangers, featuring pictorial nods to the buildings’ colorful occupants past and present, and handmade by owners Richlovsky and Coulter, reinforce our identity and add visual interest. In 2019, Bad Bishop Bar picked up the final storefront and gave it a gorgeous makeover, opening to rave reviews.

As it turns out, making space for the arts was a really good business decision. This year, when the restaurants and retail tenants saw a precipitous drop in revenues, or had to close entirely, our rental receipts took a hit, just like those of every commercial building owner. However, the art studio tenants have paid rent in full every month of the pandemic, and helped us get through the year.

Our tenants and partners continue to creatively respond to challenges: Cherry Street Coffee, a daytime business, is making room in the mezzanine for Sake Nomi tasting room, an evening destination. They will share some seating (when we can sit inside again), and their coexistence will add to the dynamism of the whole. We invested in community when we bought this building, and community is what is helping us survive.

This year, we are looking for additional partner-owners, people who share our vision of a world where creatives reap the benefits of their work, to help write the Good Arts Building’s next chapter. It’s an opportunity to invest in the creative economy and Seattle’s future. Contact us if this sounds like you.

A storefront with full-height windows facing Cherry Street is available for rent October 1. This charming space opens on to retail arcade with a sitting area, furniture, and art. The adjoining tenants are Sew Generously Bespoke, a master tailor, and Lolo’s Hair Design. The dedicated space is 185 square feet; full use of the shared space (arcade, bathrooms, and kitchenette) is included in the rent of $700 .

The Good Arts Arcade was established in the Good Arts Building in 2017 to provide affordable space for the making, exhibiting, and selling of a range of creative goods, and foster a supportive community for the makers and sellers.

Flanked by the anchor location of Cherry Street Coffee House to the west, and the entrance to ’57 Biscayne Artist Studios to the east, Good Arts Arcade is perfectly situated for creative collaboration, fabulous combined events, and synergistic marketing opportunities. The location is well situated for foot traffic from the nearby light rail station, ferries, and Pioneer Square park.

We are seeking creative community builders—artists, gallerists, human-scale retailers—to work, grow, and collaborate in the Arcade. Contact: David Pew of Sew Generously for details and viewing. (He holds the master lease and is moving into the adjoining space.)

The Salon Rue de Cerise, our swanky guest suite on the third floor, comes with its own gallery show, hung salon-style, of course. Until now, the show was exclusively for guests, and guests alone could purchase the art, through our top-secret shop page.

Our mission as a building is to support artists and other micro-businesses that contribute to our city’s vitality. The proceeds from the Salon Rue de Cerise help us keep the art studio rents below market rate. We also use it to promotes the rich culture of Seattle and Pioneer Square, encouraging guests to support the local arts scene. At the moment the Salon is sadly guest-less, and will remain so until social distancing orders are dialed back to the point that people are again visiting Seattle.

To help generate some income for Seattle’s artists, and make sure there’s a culture to come back to when all this is over, we’re opening the gallery up to the public for a limited time. We have some very affordable art by many beloved Seattle artists* that we’ll ship to your home for free. Simply visit the shop page, find something to fall in love with, and we’ll make it happen.

*Juan Alonso Rodriguez, Daniel Carrillo, Jed Dunkerley, Eric Eschenbach, Henrietta’s Eye, Elizabeth Arzani, Karey Kessler, Krisna Schumann, Dara Solliday, Jane Richlovsky, and Nathan Vass, to name a few.

Our newest Good Arts addition, on First Avenue next to Cherry Street Coffee House, Bad Bishop Bar, will open Wednesday, October 24 for cocktails and eats. We’ll keep the secret passage open that same night for ’57 Biscayne’s 100 under $100/Sweet Suite 300 Industry Night and artists’ reception, so guests can pop down for a bite of food, or up for a bite of art.

Wednesday, October 24

110 Cherry Street AND 704 First Avenue (with secret passage!)

’57 Biscayne event is from 5-7; Bad Bishop’s until 9

Congrats to Bad Bishop owner Jesse for this nice write-up in Seattle Met. And to our second-newest retail tenant, Sew Generously, joining H Bailey Boutique vintage menswear in the quest to make the men of Seattle, and anyone else, look fabulous. (108 Cherry in the Arcade)

 

New Airbnb spot offers unique experience – while benefitting local artists

For those who dream of a night at the museum, a little more time uninterrupted in a gallery or a completely unique stay, the Good Arts Building has you covered.

A new Airbnb room, with space for up to two guests, is opening its doors in the ’57 Biscayne studio complex located at 110 Cherry St. in Pioneer Square – just in time for Seattle Art Fair.

Named “Salon Rue de Cerise,” the space was inspired by Gertrude Stein’s living room on the Rue de Fleurus, with its walls hung floor to ceiling with paintings by as-yet-unknown artists, an inspiring space for conversation and new ideas.

By staying for the night, guests will also be lending a helping hand to the local art scene. Overnight rentals will help subsidize the building’s art studios – unlike other Airbnb units, which have drawn criticism for replacing affordable housing.

“This is about helping artists stay in the middle of the city,” founder and artist Jane Richlovsky said. “It’s supporting artists working in Pioneer Square.”

Typically (and even stereotypically), artists give a boost to a struggling area and are later priced out. Instead, at the Good Arts Building, Richlovsky is creating a new model, one that encourages creatives to stay in the neighborhood they revitalized.

“Artists are good for the economy,” she said. “I like to think we’re good for other things as well, but the economy gets peoples’ attention.”

The Good Arts building has a rich history, entrenched in the arts, to maintain, after all. There once was a world famous jazz club in its walls, a fringe theatre in its basement and a photography studio in the halls. It also housed a boxing gym and the first gay and lesbian community center in Seattle.

Richlovsky and other studio artists are hanging a secret art show in the Airbnb room. Only guests will be able to view and purchase the work, priced affordably, through an online store and have it sent to their homes.

Guests will also have a large window view of Pioneer Square. “You’re right in the middle of it all,” Richlovsky said. “There’s a lot to do in the neighborhood.”

Guests staying at the Salon Rue de Cerise will receive a binder of recommended stops and experiences in Pioneer Square – as well as a few special options in nearby artists’ studios and retail boutiques.

Richlovsky has maintained a studio in Pioneer Square since 2001. She founded ’57 Biscayne in 2011 to offer affordable workspaces for her fellow evictees of the storied 619 Western arts building and also to maintain the presence of artists in Pioneer Square. She took advantage of the neighborhood’s then low rental rates and her DOT relocation funds to secure the second-floor master- lease specifically to provide affordable art studios.

“In Seattle, as in so many cities across the country, artists and arts businesses have set the foundation for struggling neighborhoods to transform into highly desirable real estate markets, only to be priced out of them once this happens,” Richlovsky said.

In 2015, the artist-developer partnership Good Arts LLC formed to buy the entire building, to keep the artists in Pioneer Square and to provide additional affordable space for the creation, promotion, and exhibition of a broad range of artistic endeavors.

In keeping with its mission, the Good Arts Building recently repurposed its third floor – once office space for the tech industry – into more studios.

Want to stay in the Good Arts Building? Book it here.

Photo by Jeanie Lewis

You Are Here, Too opens Thursday, May 3 at the Good Arts Gallery.

In a city in which the ground has literally shifted several times over the past hundred years from seismic activity and human intervention, and continues to shift through highway projects and rampant development, maps can provide a link to the shared past and a record of the layers underneath.

You Are Here Too, an exhibition of artists’ responses to maps and mapping, opens May 3, 2018, continuing through August 30, at the Good Arts Building in Pioneer Square. The show is divided between two galleries within the building: Good Arts Gallery, inside Cherry Street Coffee House at 700 First Avenue, and ’57 Biscayne Artist Studios, upstairs at 110 Cherry Street (maps provided onsite). You Are Here, Too is co-curated by artists Annie Brule and Jane Richlovsky. Brule is also a cartographer.

Incorporating actual maps, or images, typography, and constructs borrowed from maps, the artworks in the show trace the topography of the natural world, political boundaries, the built environment, slavery, motherhood, and more. Artists working in diverse media—paintings, drawings, layered collages, embroidery, digital media, and ceramics—include David Francis, Nia Michaels, Dara Solliday, Joseph Pentheroudakis, Dawn Endean, Savina Mason, Morgan Cahn, Beverly Naidus, Elizabeth Arzani, Ann Marie Schneider, Hadar Iron, Lindsay Peyton, Warren Munzel, Marie Abando, Ann Marie Schneider, and Karey Kessler.

Like visual art itself, maps are an agreed-upon, yet arbitrary representation of real things; they are abstract metaphors for real places. In a lifetime of experiencing the world through these metaphors, maps and the actual places they represent start to layer themselves on top of one another in the mind of the navigator.

The layering effect is reflected in the very location of You Are Here, Too: Beloved local institution Metsker Maps occupied the footprint of Good Arts Gallery, purveying maps there from 1986-2004. Digging deeper into the layers, the ground on which the building sits was a center of commerce for the Duwamish, and Seattle’s original coastline.

The First Thursday opening reception will be held on May 3, from 6-9 PM, along with our first building-wide open house. Artists’ studios will be open to the public at ’57 Biscayne (110 Cherry), including the new third-floor expansion, and inside the Good Arts Arcade at 108 Cherry. We’ll have live piano music by Victor Janusz in the second-floor lobby.

Image: Orientation / Sand Earth, Ann Marie Schneider; photography, digital media, custom printing technique; limited edition giclee print

. . . to Cherry Street Coffee House. He probably just wanted a cup of coffee.

Actually, that’s the name of an art show, our second one at the Good Arts Gallery, nestled in the upper level of Cherry Street Coffee House. Every two months, ’57 Biscayne proprietrix Jane Richlovsky teams up with a different guest co-curator to put together a new exhibit. This month’s co-curator, Hen Chung of RAD AND HUNGRY, brings us paintings by Mike Tidwell.

“The Devil Showed Up Early” opens January 4 with a First Thursday reception from 5-7:30 and continues through February.

If God and the Devil met on Earth to battle against one another, I’ve always imagined it would take place in the American Deep South. With probably more churches than schools, one could argue the South is setting the stage for a confrontation of “good vs. evil”.

Growing up in small town Alabama, The Devil Showed Up Early is a series inspired by places from my childhood. It’s always felt like there was something sinister happening below the surface – a supernatural eeriness. Dig deep into the soil, and there’s beauty born from the Deep South’s past despite its twisted history. And of course, the Devil would show up early.

Mike Tidwell

This month marks a new milestone in the transformation of the Good Arts Building, and we’re celebrating with art events all over the building. The long-awaited new Cherry Street Coffee House is finally, gorgeously open on the corner and will stay open into the evening, serving wine and beer. Up the block at 108 Cherry, the Good Arts Arcade sports new studios and retail space.

Upstairs, ’57 Biscayne will present the fourth annual 100 under $100 show, which is just like it sounds, 100 works of art priced under $100 each. Tiny paintings, exquisite ink drawings, collages, tin constructions, photographs, and more, all ready to take home by the lucky buyers. You can also tour the open studios and sip a glass of wine while the excellent and suave Victor Janusz serenades you with standards on the piano.

Inside Cherry Street Coffee House, on the mezzanine level, the Good Arts Gallery will debut with C.Y.: Selected Work by ’57 Biscayne Artists. The venue will feature rotating exhibitions organized by ’57 Biscayne proprietrix Jane Richlovsky and a cast of guest curators.

In the newly renovated Arcade, at 108 Cherry Street, guest artist Fernando Sancho will present selections from his series of photographs African Dream Academy (featured above), as a pop-up in the large gallery space (we’re currently reviewing art/retail concept proposals for a permanent tenant). The new studio tenants of the Arcade, Gina Grey & Ieva Ansaberga are also cooking up a show in the back!

Thursday, September 7

110 Cherry Street, 108 Cherry Street, 700 1st Ave.

5-9 PM

R.I.P. the album cover, sort of. We said our goodbyes to that roomy square-foot of substantial cardstock, with its fantastic artwork — maybe by Warhol or Dali or Mapplethorpe —to name just a few. We also said our goodbyes to the hours of contemplation of the cover-art while the music spun on a nearby turntable, a unique synthesis of the aural with the visual with the tactile — a feast for the soul. Then the album cover was demoted in both size and importance, a mere afterthought of a booklet cover, encased in brittle plastic. Now stripped of its physicality entirely, it’s relegated to the ether where its low-rez pixelated remains live out their diminished existence barely visible on tiny hand-held screens. Until now! With LP sales now at a twenty-eight-year high, the album cover (both genuine and fake) is back!

Original Hits by Original Artists, opening May 4 at the Good Arts Building, will pay proper homage to the art of the album cover, both past and present—without the album. The exhibit features covers for dozens of fabricated albums cut by bands that exist only in the artists’ imaginations. The show will be on view May 4 – May 31, 2017 in our 108 Cherry Street storefront, downstairs from ’57 Biscayne & next door to the future home of Cherry Street Coffee House.

A Release Party and reception for the artists will be held First Thursday, May 4, 6:00 -10:00 p.m. followed by the Upstream Music Fest, May 11-13, when there will be actual live (if unrelated) music on site, programmed by Upstream during the run of the festival. One of a handful of free venues in the neighborhood, it will be open from 4-8PM on May 11 & 12; and 1PM-8PM (music 4-8PM only) on May 13. Beer and snacks will be available for purchase during the festival courtesy of co-owner Cherry Street Coffee House. The exhibit will also be open on the last two Fridays and Saturdays in May, from 1-6PM and by appointment.

Original Hits is co-curated by artists Jane Richlovsky and Dara Solliday of ’57 Biscayne studios which, incidentally, were named for a Joni Mitchell song lyric. For this show Richlovsky and Solliday invited approximately thirty-three and one third artists to unearth those long-forgotten catch phrases that had once sparked a reply of “That would make a great band name!” and then create a full-size old-school 12-inch LP album cover for this hypothetical hitmaker. Artists include Romson Bustillo, Kelly Lyles, Nia Michaels, Jed Dunkerley, Gabriel Campanario, Richlovsky, and Solliday, showing fake album covers in paint, collage, repurposed tin, textiles, wood, and who knows what else.

Watch this space! Construction began this week for the new Cherry Street Coffee House in the southwest corner of the Good Arts Building. Three spaces are being combined, the former Cafe Bengodi plus two adjacent storefronts that once housed Metzger Maps and, in more recent memory, a bar featuring naked sushi.

Good Arts denizens ’57 Biscayne Studios will present Original Hits by Original Artists as the inaugural exhibit in the new space: Opening May 4,  the show will pay proper homage to the art of the album cover, both past and present—without the album. The exhibit features covers for approximately 33-1/3  fabricated albums cut by bands that exist only in the artists’ imaginations. On view May 4 – May 31, 2017 in the future home of Cherry Street Coffee House, 700 1^st Avenue.

A Release Party and reception for the artists will be held First Thursday, May 4, 6:00 -10:00 p.m. followed by the Upstream Music Fest, May 11-13, when there will be actual live (if unrelated) music on site, programmed by Upstream during the run of the festival. (One of a handful of free venues in the neighborhood.)

Good Arts will be home to three pop-up galleries this weekend, in addition to a freshly-spruced-up ’57 Biscayne.

Above, ’57 Biscayne artists transform the upstairs lobby and install Placiness.