Monday, October 5, 2009

Lake Worth sculpts image as cultural capital

Click link for excellent PB Post article by Leslie Streeter - some excerpts:

And in its biggest coup, the city has persuaded the Palm Beach County Cultural Council to move its offices here next year from West Palm Beach.

The city's community redevelopment agency also has launched an ambitious project called the Cultural Renaissance Program, a novel approach to economic redevelopment through the arts.

Launched in April, the Cultural Renaissance Program has a goal to make Lake Worth the county's cultural center. Its first project was spending nearly three-quarters of its $1 million budget for the just-ended fiscal year on moving the cultural council, an umbrella group representing the county's cultural organizations, to the city.

Its next move is promoting reduced-cost purchases of foreclosed or abandoned commercial and residential properties. The city hopes to entice artists to convert them into studios and work spaces, eventually eradicating pockets of blight, says CRA Executive Director Joan Oliva.

The program is focused on an area of about 130 homes, west of Dixie Highway between Second Avenue South and Third Avenue North and west to North D Street.

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While Paducah's project began with the purchase of properties, Lake Worth's began with a $700,000 incentive to woo the cultural council to town from its offices in a West Palm Beach high-rise.

"That was a completely different way to start, and in my wildest dreams we never thought we would start there," Barone says, "but I told (cultural council Executive Director Rena Blades), 'We gotta get this done.' "

Blades agreed. Four years ago, her organization created a strategic plan that called for its relocation to a downtown area accessible to pedestrians, where there would be meeting and exhibition space for local artists. When Barone called "out of the blue and said, 'We want you to move to Lake Worth,' " she knew they'd found a match.

"It's perfect, because of the history of (the city), because of what is already there, and because of its promised future," Blades says. "There are those fabulous buildings and cultural entities like the Playhouse, and all those art deco buildings. The history is very rich, and one we can tap into. In that groovy little place, this stuff is gonna thrive."

The cultural council hopes to have secured a location and begun its move within the next year, Oliva says. In the meantime, the CRA is preparing to buy properties, beginning with commercial property, within its target area.