JR: Paseo District Starts to Come Alive
http://www.thepaseo.com/
Creative life: Planned events, new merchants bring The Paseo arts district alive by Brian Brus
The Journal Record
8/16/2006
OKLAHOMA CITY – When visitors show up at The Paseo arts district in northwest Oklahoma City, the street is alive with open galleries, restaurants, shops, and even wine, hors d’oeuvres and music.
At least on the first Friday and Saturday of each month, that is.
“The artists, for the most part, haven’t been open in past years,” said Kathy Jacobsen, owner of the Kathy’s on Paseo clothing and accessories store. “And that’s been a problem when people come to the district to visit actual artists’ studios. I’ve heard the complaints myself. And then we have to apologize and try to explain on everyone’s behalf that they’re not open during the weekdays.”
So most weekdays are dead, and weekends iffy. But that’s changing, she said, with the advent of the first Friday open gallery events, which have proven “wildly successful.”
“The district hasn’t been what it could have been, but we’re getting much closer,” Jacobsen said.
The Paseo, built at the end of the 1920s as a commercial shopping district, runs along Paseo Drive about three blocks in length, beginning at NW 30th Street to the north and curving to the east to intersect with Walker at about 28th Street. The buildings that compose the district loosely adhere to a Spanish village motif with some stucco and clay tile, with a few exceptions over the years.
Advertised through a link to the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau as one of the city’s many “things to see and do,” The Paseo promises “painters, potters, photographers, writers, and actors. … You can visit a stained-glass works, a pottery studio, watch a painter at work, see a performance of a children’s theater group, have dinner, and shop.”
The district also boasts an annual arts festival every Memorial Day weekend, which packs the neighborhood streets with cars. The success of the festival alone almost justifies the district’s existence, some merchants said.
The district has taken huge strides in recent years to meet its goal of becoming a true magnet for those seeking art and nonchain restaurants and retail, shop owners said. The Paseo Artists Association steering group is even considering changing its name to include merchants, Jacobsen said. The street directory in The Paseo boasts 20 galleries and 15 businesses in the area.
The latest additions are the Art of Yoga studio and the Woodchuck Chop handmade furniture shop, with a new restaurant, Sauced – a cafe due to open in September on property owned and developed by John Belt.
That property, formerly Quality Cleaners, due to its nature, did nothing to promote the district’s creative focus, Belt said. The building has been empty for about two years as he worked to secure appropriate tenants.
“We’ve been working to develop an arts district there for the last 30 years, and it’s all been fun,” said Belt, who estimates he has an ownership or development interest in about two-thirds of The Paseo properties. His wife, Joy Reed Belt, has run an arts studio in the area for years. “The more artists we have, the more fun it is. We’re finally getting all the properties focused on the same ideas; it’s just taken a long time.
“It’s been a consistent mission, which is to have a true arts district in Oklahoma City,” Belt said. “We call the district near downtown the arts district because it’s got the (Oklahoma City) art museum, but there aren’t any working artists there. Our goal has always been an arts district where creative people worked with open shops, studios and galleries, to involve themselves in the process of the art, and those things that support such an environment.”
In a classic chicken-or-egg puzzle, however, those restaurants and merchants need artists to make street-wandering customers happy enough to return, while galleries need more customers to justify their open hours.
“In the early ’90s, it was beginning to shape up with the galleries, but they weren’t open on any particular days and people weren’t coming in,” said artist Jeanene Carver. She shares studio space with three other artists and has been a resident of The Paseo for about 11 years. “If I saw two visitors on a Saturday, I thought I was doing pretty well.”
It’s hard to tell how many resident artists run their galleries as a primary source of income and how many are open as a secondary interest. Carver said she’s working at her gallery most of the time anyway, so the front door might as well be open to visitors.
“Slowly, the association has been working to get people to stay open on certain days so we can advertise some kind of consistency,” she said. Response to the Friday evening events has been so strong that the association is considering expanding shop hours the following Saturday later into the night as well.
Is once a month enough?
“Right now it seems to be. But if we think it could work, we might be able to do a second weekend,” Carver said.
And at Paseo Pottery, owner Collin Rosebrook praised increased emphasis on street signs and district advertisements.
“Everything seems to have gelled. Those people who have come on board lately seem to be really excited about making the district work,” he said.
Rosebrook has been in The Paseo for about 16 years. He works clay in the back of his studio with the front door open to visitors.
“We’re seeing a growing consistency in the studios being kept open,” he said.
Carver said one of the key indicators of the district’s growth has been the shift in consumer quality of her visitors. Instead of people wandering through who might or might not have any appreciation for art, shop traffic now includes many more buyers and aficionados.
“All the artists here strive to put their best foot forward,” Carver said. “It would be nice if they could be open more often so that people could see that. I think everyone would benefit in the long run.”
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