Ultimately, the bottom line won. "For sure I gave up the 'hip factor,' " said Benitez. "In the end, if I'm in a mall and can sell more art, I'll give up hipness any day of the week."
Benitez said city codes prevented the artists' work from spilling out into the street. Even those stop-sign paintings he did worried a few of his FAT Village neighbors, who didn't want a bad relationship with the city. Similar codes prohibit vendors from setting up tables at art walks, and tenants are not allowed to hang large signs off the buildings.
Photo by Michael McElroy
Doug McCraw owns most of the buildings in FAT Village.
Photo by Michael McElroy
After a dispute about rent, Adam White moved to a cheaper and busier space at Galt Ocean Mile.
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Slowly, people are moving forward anyway: Local graffiti artists have been painting murals on the backs of the warehouses, facing the railroad tracks and the Regal Trace housing complex. McCraw and Leah Brown, of 18 Rabbit Gallery, are planning murals on the front sides, facing the avenue. McCraw recently received a set of street-improvement grants to install glass doors and roll-down aluminum grates over the entrances.
The tenants all agree that a vibrant-looking streetscape would draw more traffic. Still, they find it hard to reach consensus. Jim Hammond, owner of the Puppet Network puppetry and scenery shop in FAT Village, said somebody needs to take the lead if the appearance of the neighborhood is going to change, even if permission from the city doesn't come.
"Maybe the artists have just been too well-behaved," he said.
While Fioretti welded, another nocturnal transformation was taking place. A hundred feet up First Avenue, light poured out of a small door at the front of the largest warehouse, now emptied of artwork. At the center of it, in a small leather club chair, sat McCraw. He ate takeout pizza under spotlights as workers in black moved velvet screens into place all around him.
He had been talking about this for months. The workers were setting up the display and seating areas for an expensive whiskey-tasting event, sponsored by Dewars. "Very slick, very high-end," cooed McCraw as he spoke about the event. McCraw liked the whiskey-tasting because it paid good money, and it would bring the attention of well-heeled Floridians with disposable incomes. But some FAT Village tenants didn't think this move toward money and luxury and away from direct support of the arts was a good idea. Was McCraw selling out his goal of giving creativity a place to flourish?
"He's renting to a gym and a tequila company now," said White in his new gallery. "That has nothing to do with the arts in any way, shape, or form. He can't figure out what he wants to do with the space."
In fact, McCraw's vision for the village is hard to pin down, in part because he's a businessman who has learned to hedge his bets. After getting stuck with a couple of blocks of warehouses he can barely afford, McCraw will not act on idealism alone. When first asked by New Times about his vision for the future of FAT Village, McCraw was vague. "Well, I'd like to get a couple more high-tech companies in here..." He trailed off.
When asked again a few days later, he painted a more detailed picture. "I see murals, lighting on the street. Boutique restaurants, maybe a microbrewery. Tech companies, artists, studios... I'd like to see it be permanent, not just something that's around until the rents go up. But you have to get critical mass."
McCraw seems to have decided that the possibility of a pedestrian-based creative district is worth the money he's sunk into it. But unless artists stay and people visit, calling something a "creative district" won't accomplish anything.
One of the neighborhood's newest tenants, with a gleaming space anchoring the north end of First Avenue, was run by McCraw's idealistic younger counterpart.
Travis Webster is 29 years old, a clean-cut young professional — though he'd cringe at the term yuppie — with long brown hair. A self-described "business guy," he helped found the Collide Factory, which he calls "a creative and collaborative idea incubator." Like McCraw, he has business acumen that's stretched to its limits by the scale of his plans.
In the summer of 2010, Webster and a few friends, including local singer/songwriter and coffee-shop owner Ryan Alexander, converted the trapezoidal warehouse into a slick, air-conditioned space dominated by two shipping containers expertly covered in graffiti. Webster needed the space for his business, Collide Brand Partners, which would provide marketing and branding services. He decided to turn that into something far bigger by renting out desks to other "creatives."
"I thought, what if my office was everybody's office?" said Webster, sitting at a table made of rough-hewn wooden planks that he and his friends nailed together.
There was an element of subdued terror in Webster's voice when he arrived in the empty space after a cathartic bike ride on an afternoon in late February. He said he had put nearly all of his money into the space, and it was still too early to know if the pipeline of clients he envisioned would flow though the Collide Factory, enabling him to continue paying his rent and hosting shows or concerts during art walks. "I'm going to wait," he said. "I look forward to the day when it's actively working and breathing by itself."
