Does the Sweeney Center scream "rock 'n' roll" to you?
I had a dream last night that a new spot opened up in a strip mall on the south side of town. The place was called "Jazzmatazz," and as I flew over it in my dream omnipresence, I thought to my dream-self, "Oh, that's a great idea," assuming it was a retail store for dancers to buy their leg warmers and leotards and Bob Fosse videos.
Later in the dream, I learned it was actually a venue for jazz music. So I thought to my dream self, "Oh, great, someone else is gonna lose their shirt in an ill-fated attempt to follow their heart and actually start something new and fresh in this town."
I think what caused this dream was the jolt of reality I got when I attended Rockfest this past weekend. Rockfest was put together by two young local guys who have an investment in this community and who told me repeatedly, "We just want to give the kids something to do." The show, which featured seven local bands, was held at the cavernous Sweeney Center and was sparsely attended. Now, when you think "rock 'n' roll," do you think "Sweeney Center?" These guys poured their hearts into trying to do something positive and arts-related, and their choices for venue were slim, and that hurt their chances for success.
It's a repeating story in the City Different: Some poor soul in Santa Fe is willing to sink money and time and sweat into a creative venture and-more often than not-ends up brutally disappointed.
There are a number of reasons for this. One is, we lack the demographic-
e.g., young people-that traditionally supports music and the other arts. The city has paid a lot of money to initiate studies on the economic impact of the arts and on an economic development plan for Santa Fe, and they have all concluded that A) The arts pump a ton of money into our local economy and B) We need to attract young, creative people (and keep the ones who are already here) to Santa Fe in order to continue and build on that trend.
Inspired in part by Richard Florida's book
The Rise of the Creative Class
, the city is indeed making strides to rectify the problem. For example, the attempts by the City Council and other groups to promote affordable housing serve the dual purpose of attracting (or keeping) that coveted young demographic to Santa Fe-these are the folks who will pay the cover charges and buy the drinks that pay the bands and help the venue owner pay her rent-as well as attracting (or keeping) creative individuals, who, if they pay a lower mortgage, might actually have some dough left over to afford a studio or a practice space.
Assuming they can find one that is. A second reason for the oft-found failure of creative ventures is that suitable venues are hard to come by. The doomed Sweeney Center doesn't cut it. Moreover, a venue needs a certain centrality to make it attractive. The south side at first seems like a viable option-it's cheaper and there's more readily available space. The problem with the south side, however, is that venues down there are isolated; what occurs there occurs in a bit of a vacuum. This year's High Mayhem Festival was a success on the south side, but it's hard to garner excitement and support on a regular basis without a centralized district (I don't think it's a coincidence that my doomed-and geekily named-
Jazzmatazz was placed in a random south-side strip mall). It's tough to generate enthusiasm amidst a sea of chain stores and, in all frankness, it's tough to convince denizens of the northern parts of the city to drive down there. Worse, it's clear the city has pretty much written off the south side as an option for creative urban development, unless you count Wal-Mart.
Until that changes-and I wish it would-that leaves us with the Railyard, which is shaping up to be an admirable attempt, for the most part, to walk the walk of cultural talk. A new building for Warehouse 21, a permanent site for the Farmers' Market, and extensive live/work space (including some set aside for affordable housing), all anchored by SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe Clay, El Museo and various industrial entities-sounds good, huh? It
is
good, actually.
Except, there's no space for something like Rockfest. El Museo might fit the bill for some shows, W21 for the underage crowd, but can we get a little lovin' for a grownup, mid-size venue that's city-supported? Santa Fe's dance scene is still smarting from the end of the Paramount, how 'bout a place a DJ and five of his friends could rent out cheaply, serve some drinks and have a dance party? Nope, nothing like that in store at the Railyard.
There are plans, however, for, uh, movies. Last week the Railyard Corporation more or less got the go-ahead to move forward on its plans to build a big ol' theater, housed in a faux-industrial-feel building, plus three stories of underground parking and a bunch of retail space…oh, right, a
mall
.
There's no reason to deride the idea of a mall in a knee-jerky kind of way, but in this instance it's such a waste of opportunity. We've already got a movie theater in this area-the Jean Cocteau-and it is genuinely funky, definitely bohemian and cool. To concoct a giant theater with a facade of funky, bohemian coolness when the real deal is right there makes no sense. This is a giant amount of space, thousands and thousands of square feet that could be put to use for actual artists and musicians. How 'bout cut the screens down from 10 to five, cut some of the retail space in half (really, how much more shit do we have to sell? Is there that big a market for piñon-scented candles?) and dole out a few square feet for the DJ who can't practice in his rental house because his landlord won't let him?
It strikes me that, for a town that generally hates George W Bush and all he stands for, we certainly are fond of his uber-capitalist philosophy. Remember after 9.11 when the Bush administration told us, "Go buy stuff! Use your credit cards! The best way to show terrorists they haven't won is to be the best consumers we can be!"? Bush's idea of an "ownership society" translates roughly into "buying society," and jacking up a big mall in what is supposed to be an artistic area follows along in lockstep with his vision of America. I have nothing against capitalism, but isn't it time to think about things in a different way? Sometimes consumerism is an immediate answer-to some extent, I suspect the retail area will fill our tax coffers-but the long-range goal is to gain more-economically and otherwise-by gaining artists, by gaining musicians, by gaining young people, by investing, long-term, in what all the studies the city has done suggest is Santa Fe's strongest point: the arts.
How nice would it be, in the future, for folks like the Rockfesters to have a Railyard option instead of a beat-up convention center? Unfortunately, unless something drastic happens, it looks like the Railyard's missed opportunity means heavy metal at the Sweeney Center (or its successor) for the foreseeable future. But at least we'll get to see Tom Cruise's latest flick on two screens, and we'll be well-stocked with scented candles.
The city will hold a public meeting at 8:30 am, Wednesday, Oct. 26 at the Lensic to discuss what has been accomplished in terms of the economic development studies.
