The Brooklyn of the Berkshires? Pittsfield's Push for a "Cultural Economy" Begins to Gain Momentum - On The Other| David Scribner's column from the Berkshire Other

The Brooklyn of the Berkshires? Pittsfield's Push for a "Cultural Economy" Begins to Gain Momentum

by DAVID SCRIBNER

PITTSFIELD, Mass.

When more than a thousand people turned out on the streets of downtown Pittsfield on a rainy Thursday evening in June for a celebration of the arts, music and culture, the city"s old-timers must have thought the halcyon days of General Electric Co. had returned.

For more than half a century, GE dominated the city"s economy, employing 15,000 at its 250-acre transformer manufacturing, Aerospace and Plastics divisions. Thursday was payday, and downtown merchants stayed open through the evening to take advantage of GE families flush with cash.

Then in 1976, after PCBs were declared a probable carcinogen and banned from use as a coolant in transformers, General Electric, which had brought such good things to Pittsfield, began to shut down its operations. Over the next dozen years, the once thriving downtown became a windswept mausoleum of vacant storefronts. GE"s shuttered and contaminated factory complex became a symbol of prosperity that might never return.

But city officials are now confident they"ve found a replacement for heavy manufacturing to revitalize the city"s core: the creative economy.

That"s a shorthand term, invented by Carnegie Mellon economist Richard Florida, for a blend of cultural and entertainment venues spiced with art galleries, upscale restaurants and a hip community of artists. Together, the theory goes, these create a social ambience from which grow new businesses, fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit of a "creative class."

"What we are seeing now is a city in the early stages of revitalization," boasts Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto, a firm believer in the creative economy. "For me, the creative focus at work here begins to set the tone for how the community perceives itself. The more creative a population we can attract, the broader the opportunities for our citizens, and especially for our youth."

In the past few years, he points out, more than $60 million - most of it private investment - has been poured into restoring downtown theaters and converting neglected buildings in the heart of downtown into upscale condominiums, artists" lofts, retail spaces and restaurants. And there are more projects on the horizon.

The strategy has been reinforced by a new city agency, the Office of Cultural Development, and by the establishment of a downtown tax-free district for works of art created by artists who live within it.

Pittsfield"s effort to remake itself as a cultural center rests in part on the cachet of the towns to its south, from Lenox to Great Barrington, where the arts have long been a major economic force - but where many artists and creative entrepreneurs now find themselves priced out of the market.

Now it seems Pittsfield"s campaign may be starting to pay off. In the past two years, despite a national real estate slump, the price of an average home in the city has risen from $155,000 to $205,000.

Setting the pace

The apparent resurgence of Pittsfield reflects a wider trend among the Northeast"s "cities in the country," what North Adams, Mass., developer Eric Rudd identifies as the growing appeal of an urban environment - a safe, uncongested, affordable urban environment - in a bucolic setting.

It"s a trend that seems to be benefiting cities like Glens Falls and Hudson, N.Y., and Rutland, Vt., as well.

"After 9/11, there"s been a new movement toward rural cities that are safe, attractive and friendly," said Glens Falls Mayor LeRoy Akins Jr. "As a result, we"re a new destination for developers."

In Glens Falls" case, it also doesn"t hurt to be a 20-minute ride few from Saratoga Springs, a hotbed of cultural and recreational activities whose high-priced property values have prompted developers to explore nearby, less expensive opportunities.

Saratoga-based developer Bruce Levinsky, for example, has already spent nearly $15 million to buy and renovate old buildings in downtown Glens Falls. His latest project involves conversion of a former glove factory into 65 condominiums, with prices ranging from $250,000 to nearly $1 million.

"The buzz is here," Akins said. "We"re a rediscovered city environment. We had lost our downtown base due to urban renewal and the construction of shopping plazas and malls. But people miss a downtown ambience and living style where you don"t have to jump in your car to get a loaf of bread."

To the east, Rutland, Vt., is proceeding more cautiously on incorporating the concept of a creative economy into the fabric of its downtown. After a series of workshops sponsored by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, the city has settled on several initiatives, such as closing Center Street to traffic every Friday night for a series of events featuring outdoor entertainment and sidewalk sales. So far, though, the city"s attention has not been drawn to recreating a downtown residential environment.

But no city in the region has pursued the concept of a cultural economy more vigorously than Pittsfield, and no city has more at stake.

Fostering entrepreneurs

Three years ago, Pittsfield made an early - and as it turns out, fortuitous - commitment to the creative economy. At the insistence of Mayor Ruberto, but not without furious political infighting, the City Council approved the formation of a new position on the city payroll: director of cultural development.

The job went to California native and cultural events organizer Megan Whilden, who had settled in the Berkshires as part of a group of artists, musicians and writers. The city hasn"t been the same since.

At her desk at the front of the gallery of the city-owned Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, Whilden insists she isn"t a bureaucrat.

"Cultural revitalization is a key component for economic revitalization," she said. "And it has to be in the hands of artists and people in the arts, not in the hands of a government bureaucracy."

Maybe. But the creative economy could not exist without entrepreneurs willing to risk capital on a vision of a refurbished urban environment. Chief among those in Pittsfield is George Whaling, whom many call the Prince of North Street for his acquisition and restoration of handsome but neglected buildings on the city"s main street - and for his demolition of ramshackle properties that had become havens for drug dealers.

"To be honest, I"m not sure the economic recovery of the city will be driven primarily by the creative economy," Whaling said, while relishing an Americano in the Bellissimo Dolce coffeehouse on the ground floor of his Greystone building, with its niche street-level shops and four floors of upscale apartments.

"For sure, the artists and the cultural activity get Pittsfield to have more exposure to people who do what I"m doing," he said. "They"re now able to see what I saw seven years ago - a city with great character, with a cool eclectic feel of an evolving urban neighborhood.

"What I see is the fact that we"re two-and-a-half hours from the world"s financial center, with a unique, beautiful infrastructure, in a beautiful mountainous region with plenty of opportunities for culture and recreation. We"re going to be discovered some day. Smart companies mine intelligence."

Still, in Whilden"s three years as Pittsfield"s cultural czar, the city has scored coup after coup in attracting arts organizations and artisans.

Major changes

Last year, Barrington Stage, the award-winning theater company led by Julianne Boyd, left its namesake town to settle in a renovated Berkshire Music Hall, the former Public Theatre on Union Street in downtown Pittsfield. The company opened its season this summer with "West Side Story."

The Colonial Theatre, a 1903 vaudeville theater that had been closed for more than 50 years, reopened last August after a $21.6 million restoration, with most of the money coming from the federal, state and city governments.

Now under construction is a downtown, $12 million six-screen cinema complex and marketplace.

A Boston developer, Roy Krantz, has purchased the former Silk Mill, in Pittsfield"s poor Morningside District with the intention of constructing an $18 million "creative village" of 75 live-work homes.

"The city is making it absurdly easy," Krantz said. "I"m trying to create a destination and a lifestyle for a resident population of mixed ages and income. And for those who want to retire here, rather than go to Florida, the Silk Mill will offer a creative community where you have a book club instead of bingo."

And last year, two nationally recognized artisans, the weaver Sam Kasten and recycled clothing designer Crispina ffrench, relocated their operations to the former Notre Dame parish facilities in the heart of downtown - Kasten in the former parochial school, ffrench in the basement of the church.

"I never in my life thought I"d be living in Pittsfield," said ffrench, who grew up in Stockbridge and now lives, with her husband and three children, next door to the church in the parish rectory. "But we needed to expand, and there was no other place in the county where you could buy a nice size building for a reasonable price. And I love to be able to walk around the city.

"Cool things are happening in Pittsfield," she said. "The people in charge are receptive to creative thoughts."

Receptive indeed. For three years, downtown city streets have hosted art and craft exhibitions, including "Art of the Game" sculptures of baseball players and equipment, to tout Pittsfield as the birthplace of national pastime - or at least the place where the game was first publicly referred to.

The city"s venerable baseball stadium, Wahconah Park, has landed concerts by Bob Dylan two years running. Even the First United Methodist Church across from City Hall revamped its capacious - and too often sparsely populated -- sanctuary to be able to stage major musical acts.

Creative capital

Among these marquee developments, however, none signifies the emergence of a collaborative network of private capital and creative sensibility more than last year"s opening of Spice, a $10 million restaurant, gallery and banquet complex on North Street, followed by this summer"s relocation of the Ferrin Gallery, a internationally recognized art and ceramics dealer, to downtown Pittsfield.

The Ferrin Gallery, once a staple of the Lenox art scene and of Northampton"s before that, held a formal gala opening July 7. (It had been open for two weeks before that on an informal basis.) Its new Pittsfield location is in one of the North Street buildings reconfigured by Whaling into condos, both retail and residential.

Gallery owners Leslie Ferrin and Donald Clark said they had been unable to find suitable, reasonably priced space in southern Berkshire County to accommodate their need for a larger exhibition space. At first, they considered buying a building in Pittsfield where real estate was a comparative bargain. But they settled on a 2,600-square-foot ground-floor space as well as a second-floor residential condominium for visiting artists and customers.

"I want to be part of what is to come," quipped Clark, quoting the French fashion designer Coco Chanel. "It became increasingly clear to us that something was going on in Pittsfield, and it had to do with the arts. We just had to be part of it."

Rather than expand in the wealthier towns to the south, Clark and Ferrin saw Pittsfield as the county"s new cultural center.

"The only place you can get the kind of space we need is in a city," Clark said. "We"re a destination, and we"ve put our destination in Pittsfield. We"ve been open for a week, and already we"re seeing our people show up."

Ferrin sees a "rapidly accelerating process of redevelopment" in the city.

"We can now see and become part of the next phase, the combination of theater and visual arts and the art "consumers" who are attracted to discover the city and see what it has to offer," she said.

Ferrin insists that "art and artists" have been propelling the city"s renaissance, beginning with the Storefront Artists Project. The project, the brainchild of painter Maggie Mailer, began populating vacant storefronts with artists" studios five years ago as a means of calling attention to the potential of city spaces -- and as an invitation to artists to make Pittsfield their home.

But both Ferrin and Clark are cautious, too, predicting it will take time to transform the city.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ferrin and Clark both were part of the revival of downtown Northampton, now a bustling center of commerce, culture and education.

"It could take longer in Pittsfield," Clark said. "Northampton didn"t have to polish a tarnished reputation."

He was referring to the PCB contamination left behind by General Electric - a toxic legacy that has taken nearly $500 million to clean up so far.

"But on the other hand, Pittsfield just might come into its own faster than you might expect because of the culture vultures to the north in Williamstown, and in south Berkshire County," Clark added.

"Beyond an investment"

Their circumspection is echoed, surprisingly, by Joyce Bernstein, who with her husband, Larry Rosenthal, invested $10 million over the past seven years in converting a former department store into corporate office space for their business, Link to Life, and the Spice restaurant complex.

The latter is a half-block of upscale spacious dining rooms, dashing interiors and lounges complete with jazz ensembles on Thursday nights. With its sleek faÁade of burnished wood and floor-to-ceiling windows, it"s worthy of New York, Denver or Santa Monica -- a stunning sign that something different is going on in Pittsfield.

Soon, there will be more. Spice will add a casual eatery, appropriately named Burger, to its lineup. Upstairs, Bernstein is having a 300-seat banquet hall built to accompany the 125-seat banquet facility already in operation. And a 30-seat private dining room will follow.

"There isn"t such a thing as a magic bullet to replace what General Electric once meant to this city," Bernstein said. "I don"t think the creative economy is a substitute. And to quote Gertrude Stein, there"s no there here - yet - not by a long measure."

But it"s getting there.

That people are now willing to explore downtown Pittsfield in droves was evident from the success of the inaugural "3rd Thursday" celebration held June 21. In an echo of the General Electric era, 66 businesses and entertainment venues remained open from 5 to 8 p.m., while sidewalks and parks hosted performances and exhibitions ranging from dancing to circle drumming to restored classic cars. The series continues this month on July 19.

"More than 1,000 people turned out on the street for the 3rd Thursday event," Bernstein recalled. "It was an artsy crowd, a middle class crowd, a lower class crowd. In Spice, we sold 52 kids" dinners in three hours. People were bringing their children out."

She"s well aware - and proud - of the effect her project has had on the rest of downtown development.

"I wouldn"t be surprised if our investment had triggered at least $10 million up and down the street - probably more," she added. "The private sector can act very independently, on independent criteria. Think of this: Pittsfield is the county seat, and the pale of GE"s PCB contamination is being lifted off the community. The towns around us, especially to the south where I live, are overpriced and saturated.

"Pittsfield is the least seasonal of Berkshire communities - less dependent on the tourist seasons - and above all, the new urbanism is cool. Plus, there are some real bargains in real estate in Pittsfield."

Ruberto describes Bernstein"s development as something extraordinary in the city"s recent history.

"It is truly a gift to the city, beyond an investment," the mayor said. "It is the creation of an environment that only investors and private entrepreneurs can realize. It celebrates a city in the country."

Moving in

On a Saturday morning at the Bellissimo Dolce coffeehouse, Linda Carroll and Connie Silver chatted companionably, as they do many mornings.

Both are retired. Carroll is from Pennsylvania, Silver from Santa Monica, Calif. Both have purchased condominiums within a few steps of the coffeehouse.

"I"d been coming up to Lenox for years -- my cousin lives there -- to go to Tanglewood," Carroll said. "Everything I enjoy to do is here in the Berkshires. When I found out about the renaissance going on in Pittsfield, I wanted to be a part of it. There"s a meld of ages different age groups here.

"It"s not a Lenox address, of course," she added. "My cousin couldn"t believe I"d be even thinking of living in Pittsfield. But I think that attitude is changing."

For her part, Silver said she prefers Pittsfield because it"s quieter and less crowded than her previous home in California, and because it"s situated in a beautiful area - and near Tanglewood.

"It"s all the things I thought it would be," she said. "This is a town interested in growing in positive ways, and people can make a difference here."

At City Hall, Ruberto was reflecting last month on the announcement of another downtown residential development project - a $10 million apartment complex for working professionals.

"I have this idea," he mused, "that Pittsfield could become an enclave, a really well-known and respected enclave, for emerging artists."

Pretty soon, they might be calling it the Brooklyn of the Berkshires.

This article was originally published in the August 2007 Hill Country Observer as its cover story.