Arts District Considered in City

By Desiree Parker Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The city of Williamsburg has created a focus group to investigate the creation of an arts district in the city, and has funded a feasibility study by an outside agency to analyze the idea.

The city approved $12,500 for the company ArtSpace to conduct the feasibility study, and has established the focus group which had its first meeting this week. “We have been contemplating ways to encourage and enhance the Creative Economy as an economic development initiative in the City,” Economic Development Director Michelle Mixner DeWitt wrote in a memo to the Economic Development Authority this month.

“In more than a year of discussions with you, local businesses, local institutions, existing creative entrepreneurs, artists, and other communities, I determined that we need an inclusive process to understand our economic opportunities around the creative economy and to develop an initiative that has broad support and makes sense in our market.”

The city council agreed with the idea of looking into the creation of an arts district in December. The feasibility study and the group will both work to identify potential revenue growth from an arts district, identify the city and the EDA’s role in building it, help create partnerships among existing groups involved in the arts, and to examine whether such a district might improve the tourist-based economy in the area.

If an arts district is created, the city would be able to offer incentives to arts-related businesses that locate within the boundary.

The study and the focus group will begin this week with an estimated completion date of mid-April. “The process we have outlined will be very public and will include many more stakeholders in addition to the members of this core group and the EDA,” DeWitt said. Part of their work will include identifying where the district would be within the city.

The focus group’s organizational meeting was Tuesday; the next will be in two weeks, February 2.