PEOPLE
kt Andresky lived and worked in an artist collective in San Francisco up until a couple years ago. It was located in a part of town called the Mission District, where Andresky would hear gun shots in her neighborhood once a week.
It was gritty, but Andresky says it had some of the best bars and underground parties in the city. Not to mention good, cheap tacos.
Sure enough, word got out. Coffee shops started popping up, more people moved in, and Andresky's rent skyrocketed.
"It was changing organically, says Andresky, "and I was thinking I don't want to go through this an artist, this whole gentrification process."
So, she and a couple friends started to look for a new place to live.
"I started researching Detroit because...I [didn't] really know anything about it," explains Andresky. "When I started looking at it online, I kept emailing [my friends], saying, look at this!"
Andresky figured Detroit was about as far as you could get from gentrification. So in 2007 she moved to an apartment on Detroit's east side.
A couple doors down was an old, gutted out grocery store which she also rented in the hopes of turning it into a neighborhood art space. Her friend, artist Blake Carroll, helped her fix it up.
"There was no electricity," says Carroll, "so we'd run off our neighbors house on extension cords, and there's no plumbing." If someone needs to go to the bathroom, they send them to Andkresy's apartment, or they "tell people go pee in the compost; it's good for the compost," says Andresky.
They call the space the Yes Farm, and despite its obvious lack of amenities, the place has brightened up the block. Neighbors use the Yes Farm to hold community meetings. Some of them even use the space to put on their own art work.
But now Andresky wants to fix up her own place; a place where, no matter how high the rent goes, she will not be priced out like she was in the Mission District.
So she teamed up with the nonprofit 555 art gallery and bought a 40,000-square foot building nearby for $21,000.
"Well," says Andresky, "Detroit is one of only places where an artist can come in and probably own a building with the amount of revenue that they get."
"It's the only way to know you're not going to get kicked out," adds Carroll. "If you own the spot, then you can make whatever improvements you want."
It takes a little while for Blake Carroll to unscrew the heavily boarded up door, but when we finally get inside, the word "improvements" doesn't even begin to describe it. The place is completely destroyed.
"You basically get the outside walls," jokes Carroll. "I mean, we got a good deal on a bunch of bricks, basically. It needs new windows, the floor is all buckled, water has been coming in, the basement was like the public bath house."
In the distance, you can see the shiny RenCen from one of the blown out windows on the top floor.
The goal is to turn the building into what Andresky half-jokingly calls the World Headquarters for artists and arts organizations. There will be a wood shop, ceramic studio, dance floor, retail and office space, even apartments on the top floor.
It's going to take a lot of money and a lot of sweat to make that happen. And it's pretty obvious, even to a man named Oscar, who rolled up on his bike as we were heading out.
"So you're trying to make something out of that?" asks the man on the bike. "I was thinking about getting part of the crew that helps renovate it."
Looks like they may have just recruited their first volunteer.
Contact Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu
Click on the links to learn more about The Yes Farm or the 555 gallery.
© Copyright 2012, MICHIGAN RADIO
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