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Frequently Asked Questions about 111 First Street Q: Is anybody left in the building? A: Indeed. Rumors that the building has already been evacuated are completely untrue. There are about seventy tenants still at 111 First. That's down considerably from the two hundred or so who populated the Arts Center a couple of years ago, but the seventy who've stuck it out are very much the core of the community. They feel they've earned the right to stay, and to have a say in the redevelopment of the building. They're not going anywhere until a judge demands that they move. Q: Didn't all of the "serious" professional artists leave, though? A: Among the seventy tenants currently at 111 First Street are many of Jersey City's best-known, best-loved, and most high-profile artists. Norm Francoeur, Ed Fausty, Barbara Landes and Paul Sullivan, Bex Goyette: these are all folks whose work you can easily see around town, in bars, restaurants, small businesses, civic structures. If anything, the recent troubles at the building have winnowed out some tenants who don't have a deep commitment to the arts or to Jersey City. Those who have been willing to put up with the mistreatment by management are largely those who are determined to see the vision of an Arts District through. Q: Is the building unsafe? A: That depends on who you talk to. Building management claims that 111 First Street is a safety hazard, but I have never heard of anybody getting hurt over there. If last week's arson showed us anything, it's that the structure's internal systems are well-equipped to meet challenges. Ask Shandor Hassan if the sprinkler system at 111 is working okay. Q: Why are artists at 111 First Street subsidized? Why shouldn't other Jersey City creatives -- or non-creatives, for that matter -- be subsidized? A: The fallacious notion that the tenants at 111 First Street are recipients of municipal welfare of one sort or another is the most persistent misapprehension I encounter when discussing this subject with people in our community. Nobody at 111 First Street is subsidized by the government.They're involved in a rent dispute with their landlord, and they've been repeatedly threatened with displacement. To combat this, they've occasionally asked the city government for help. The Smith Administration pledged support to the community, and attempted to broker a resolution between the tenants and the landlord. When the management's infractions against its tenants became unbearably egregious, Mayor Smith tried to step in to stop them -- just like a city leader is supposed to do. Neither the Smith administration nor its predecessors have given money to the tenants at 111, or subsidized their businesses or living situations. Q: What about the Powerhouse Arts District plan and WALDO? Don't those mean that artists are subsidized? A: WALDO is a FAQ column of its own, and I'm not going to get into it here. There's a pretty elaborate history of WALDO on the ProArts website, and there's nothing I really want to add to that account -- by itself, the WALDO ordinance neither subsidized artists nor did it spark development in the Warehouse District. Whether the newly-adopted Powerhouse plan will do any better remains to be seen. The people who drafted the Powerhouse plan are supporters of the community at 111 First, and the passage of the redevelopment by the City Council is a nice step in the direction of a genuine arts district. But there is no guarantee that any material advantage will accrue to any of the Arts Center tenants because of this plan. It is absolutely possible that the Powerhouse Arts District could become a development success, but that the current tenants at the Arts Center will lose their case in tenants court, and be driven from the district en masse. In short, passage of the Powerhouse plan guarantees nothing. Q: The tenants won their case in court on Monday! That means they get to stay, right? A: Monday's case, heard by Judge Gallipoli, did not address the tenants' residency claims. The case concerned management's attempts to evacuate and close the building in preparation for demolition. Gallipoli did not humor the New Gold team, but he also didn't exactly rule against them -- while he refused to give them permission to evict the artists right then and there, he ordered a full trial on the subject, and set the trial date for March. Q: So they're good until March? A: No, no, the case that Gallipoli heard was separate from the tenancy dispute. Gallipoli demanded that Judge Theemling -- he's the local jurist adjudicating the rent cases -- expedite his decisionmaking. That means that the decisions will be made no later than the week before Christmas. If the two sides can't come to an agreement in arbitration before then, all of the tenants will go before Judge Theemling, who will decide whether or not they have a legal right to occupy the building. If Theemling rules against the tenants, they could well all be out by the end of 2004, and our freshly-minted arts district could suddenly be bereft of artists. Q: Isn't it true that New Gold just wants the artists out of the building temporarily while management makes repairs? A: On Monday, Judge Gallipoli fenced the New Gold team into a corner, and forced them to admit that the landlord's intention is to knock the building down. Don't be fooled: Lloyd Goldman has no interest in repointing or renovating. He wants to drive a wrecking ball through the walls. If he could make it happen legally, 111 First Street would be a brick heap tomorrow. Q: What about the management plan to keep the outer ring of the building intact, and just construct a luxury tower in the center of the courtyard? A: This was always nonsense, and I couldn't have been more pleased to see Judge Gallipoli expose it as such. Goldman's proposed tower was in violation of several zoning ordinances -- and not just the ones that were recently passed under the watch of Mayor Smith. The New Gold plan was bad-faith architecture, and an effort to hoodwink politicians and members of the public into thinking that management was interested in compromise and the artists were intractable. It was a nice try, but nobody should be fooled by this gambit anymore. Q: The tenants live in the building, right? Doesn't that mean they're in violation of their lease? A: Well, actually, not all of the tenants do. Some of them have apartments elsewhere in Jersey City, and only come to the Arts Center to work. But, yes, many of the artists at 111 First Street do live there. This is something we've all known for years -- I've known it, you've known it, three successive municipal governments have known it, and the landlord has certainly known it. Thousands of people who've passed through Jersey City during twelve straight Studio Tours have all known it. It's been common knowledge that folks live at the Arts Center: they've held events there, dug in there, invited strangers into their studios, celebrated with us, fought with us, inspired us. Now, I am not an attorney, and I don't pretend to know anything about tenant law. But it occurs to me that if a landlord knowingly allows people to live in his building, he's under some obligation to provide those people with basic services. It's not fair to wait fifteen years and then cry foul: if you've tacitly accepted your tenants as residents, then you've made yourself complicit in their lease infractions. New Gold will probably try to argue, disingenuously, that neither they nor anybody else ever realized that artists were living at 111 First Street. They'll be confronted by a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Q: What's going on at the building right now? A: As we suspected, management has used the fire as a pretext to turn off the heat in the building and freeze out the tenants. I'll let artist Kevin Mayer tell you about it in his own words:
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