By Danielle Del Sol

Ask anyone in the know about the biggest hot spots in the country for rapidly changing population demographics, and East Harlem is guaranteed to be on the short list. For several years now New York residents have been noting the rising real estate prices in northern Manhattan, likening the trend to incredible market shifts that have occurred in Brooklyn, particularly in areas such as Williamsburg, in the past decade.

As the cradle of some of America’s most important jazz, art, poetry and literature, artists living in East Harlem — also known as El Barrio and Spanish Harlem — are at particular risk as real estate prices rise. The Andy Warhol Foundation contacted Minneapolis-based nonprofit developer Artspace Projects, which creates, owns and operates affordable spaces for artists and creative businesses across the country to ensure that artists can stay in neighborhoods they contributed to, in 2004 to see if they could find an area in one of the five boroughs that was of interest.

“The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development toured us around the city and introduced us to both PS 109 and El Barrio’s Operation Fightback,” said Shawn McLearen, Vice President for Artspace and project director for the redevelopment of PS 109. The historic school, designed in 1900 by architect Charles Snyder, had been vacant for over 10 years and was almost demolished at one point — community leaders’ protests literally stopped bulldozers and kept the building standing. “El Barrio had a very clear set of challenges and opportunities, and a very clear set of local leadership that wanted to be at the table in conducting any work together, rather than other communities that weren’t quite sure about what they wanted to do, or how a partnership like ours might benefit their efforts to reach their goals,” McLearen said.

Artspace and El Barrio’s Operation Fightback partnered that same year to transform the 115,000 square-foot, five-floor school into 90-units of affordable live/work space for artists. They finally closed on the deal in June 2012, pleasing many entities pulling for Artspace to redevelop the space, including community and city leaders. “Affordable housing in El Barrio has long been an important community goal,” McLearen said. “The NYC School Construction Authority made clear that they didn’t have enough money to turn the 19^th-century building into a 21^st-century educational facility and the community didn’t want to see anyone financing a project by turning the school into condos. So what was the community going to do?

“Artspace started to make sense because our model is to not only bring affordable housing, historic preservation and other types of financing tools together for community development agendas, but to use the financing challenge as an opportunity for other foundations to get involved as well.”

The building’s restoration posed a rare challenge in that both the exterior and interior are listed on the National Register of Historic Places — significantly driving up costs. While most developers restoring National Register-listed buildings have to worry only about the accuracy of the building’s exterior, Artspace’s restoration, to qualify for federal and state historic tax credits, has to maintain both the façade’s integrity and the interior’s significance as a former school in the building’s redesign.

One way the team has accomplished this is by keeping the 3,500 square-foot ground-floor lobby open, transforming it from a student gathering space to a community exhibit space, to be operated by the residents. Throughout the rest of the building, the demising walls are largely maintained, as are the hallways and common areas. As for the 90 units, because they’re meant to be used as both living space and a work studio, the 500 to 1,000 square foot sizes are, on average, much larger than typical affordable apartments in the New York City. “Artspace tries to make units as large as we can; we meet our mission in part by ensuring units are large enough for artists to live and work in,” McLearen said. “We have larger units but a smaller quantity.”

The redevelopment of PS 109 has quite a price tag — it’s currently estimated at $52 million — as the building was in poor condition when Artspace began construction in July 2012. Though the structure has been taken down to the beams and columns, and will require projects such as the replacement of the majority of the roof and the restoration of a copper cupola, among others, the quality of the original construction of the building still impresses McLearen. “It shows that if you handle them properly, a lot of these buildings remain exceptional,” he said. “All things considered, we’re really pleased with the state of the structural steel, masonry and terra cotta that we’ve uncovered.”

The site is also designed to be accessible to the public, which is populous in this dense neighborhood. The site is surrounded by Washington Houses, a New York City Housing Authority multi-site facility; engaging neighbors is part of the impetus behind the team’s efforts to provide a permanent green market site. Fresh food will also be grown within one of the site’s two courtyards.

“El Barrio is an incredible neighborhood,” McLearen said. “Like all of New York, it’s in a constant state of change, and there’s a cultural vibrancy that people want to protect. Cultural facilities that allow for artists and arts organizations to continue to do what they do, and maintain their traditions,” are vital, he said. “Artists are an existing portion of the affordable housing demographic, not separate from it. When you apply a fact like that to an area like El Barrio you realize quickly that there are a lot of artists in this community that want to stay here and continue to contribute to their community.”

See the complete photo gallery here.

Read more about the community engagement and financing process in “Bringing Back Bell,” featured in April’s Preservation in Print magazine.

Read more about Artspace’s PS 109 project here.