business

CHICAGO AVENUE FIRE ARTS CENTER

3749 Chicago Av. S., Minneapolis

Type: Arts studios, gallery

Size: 4,700 square feet

Year built: 1915

Developer: Artspace Projects Inc.

Architect: UrbanWorks

Details: An innovative historic rehabilitation project that its backers say is helping to revitalize a Minneapolis neighborhood commercial node has been up and running since spring.

Artspace Projects Inc., the Minneapolis-based nonprofit real estate developer for the arts, in 2008 began exploring the feasibility of rehabbing the one-time Nokomis Theater at Chicago Avenue S. and 38th Street at the behest of a group of city artists who conduct classes in fine and industrial art forms that use heat, spark, or flame.

Those include sculptural welding, blacksmithing, jewelry-making, glassworking, foundry, electronics and others.

The artists banded together as the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center and settled on the 1915-vintage former silent movie house -- which years ago had been converted into an auto body shop -- as an ideal location when it was listed for sale in 2007. The next year they signed a purchase agreement for $510,000 but couldn't get financing on their own.

That's when they turned to the city of Minneapolis and Artspace for help. The city assumed the artists' purchase agreement and acquired the property in August 2008 for $510,000. A few months later the Minneapolis City Council approved its sale to Artspace, as well as a $425,000 renovation loan from its Great Streets Neighborhood Business District program, which is aimed at fostering businesses development in neighborhood commercial nodes.

Greg Handberg, a senior vice president for Artspace, says the rehab project was essentially completed late last year and that the fire artists have the new space up and running while also continuing to equip it and build it out.

"One of great things about the project is that it's already producing spinoff activity at 38th and Chicago," he said, referring to an effort across the street by Mike Stebnitz, a partner in the former Azia restaurant, who has purchased and rehabbed a two-story commercial building at 3730 Chicago Av. S., that includes the new studio of renowned Minneapolis photographer Wing Young Huie.

That building will also soon house the new Blue Ox Coffee Co., which owner Melanie Logan says she plans to open later this month or in July.

"The Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center was a unique project for us because of the community it's in -- one that's turning a corner," added Jeff Schoeneck, a principal with UrbanWorks Architecture. "It's really great to see how the arts are sort of becoming the catalyst for it in a building that was originally designed for the arts."

DON JACOBSON

Don Jacobson, a freelance writer based in St. Paul, can be contacted at hotproperty.startribune@gmail.com.