Arts district flourishes after a period of turbulence

By Joel Rozen

At nearly the same pace that paintings are changed on gallery walls for each new show, Towles Court is changing as well.

STAFF PHOTOS / CHIP LITHERLAND / chip.litherland@heraldtribune.com

Chris Falk, 29, manager of the Katharine Butler Gallery, is one of the young faces drawn to Towles Court in downtown Sarasota within the past couple of years.

Betty Stevens is president of the Towles Court Artists Association and owner of the Elizabeth Stevens Gallery in the colorful district. "There's an excitement in the community," she says.

The residential artists' colony near downtown Sarasota has been a sometimes little-known haven for local artists for more than 15 years. Although it now houses businesses as well, with more foot traffic coming to restaurants, salons and boutiques, newly arrived gallery owners and employees are determined to raise the profile of the area.

"I get a lot of people who come in and say, 'Oh, I read about this Towles Court thing,'" says Chris Falk, 29, who manages the Katharine Butler Gallery.

He gazes over the sizable collection of photographs, oils, etchings, mixed-media collages, acrylics, ceramics and jewelry pieces now in his trust.

"But then we also get people who've lived here 20 years and say, 'I had no idea this was back here.'"

A shame, really. Because according to the many artisans and gallery owners selling their wares along Adams Lane, Morrill Street and South Links Avenue, "this Towles Court thing" is on the brink of a renaissance.

The pink, purple and lime-green cottages are quickly getting snatched up by local artists. Last year, an atelier and a painting school were opened in succession on Adams Lane. This year, the newcomers include Melly's Jewelry and More, a private gallery by artists Eric and Beverly Smith and Deja Brew, a bronze art collective of young locals who hope, eventually, to start a small cafe.

Membership in the Towles Court Artists Association is currently peaking at 22, up from a low of 6, and the flourishing mixed-use area has recently earned a mayor's citation and joined the Downtown Sarasota Merchants' Alliance. In April, Coastal Living Magazine ranked it among the 10 best artist colonies in the nation. And for the first time in years, its treasurer reports, the district is in the black financially.

"There's an excitement in the community," says Betty Stevens, president of the association and owner of the Elizabeth Stevens Gallery on Morrill Street. "We've made up a budget and stuck to it."

Elected in January, Stevens says her excitement stems in part from the young people Towles Court has attracted over the last couple of years, a "new face" led by a nursery of entrepreneurial talent.

Deja Brew owners Andrew Bowers and Davi Kuhn are 29 and 30, respectively; Canvas Cafe Gallery Director Tim Jaeger is 29.

The 20 galleries flanking the district may look sleepy in the summer months: Save for the third Friday art walk, most stay closed throughout the week. Some say commercial pursuits outnumber artistic ones in the neighborhood.

Still, the artistic is undeniably making a comeback. Onetime gallery owner Ramses Serrano had two signs installed downtown about a year ago, steering visitors toward the colony. And come October, revitalized Towles Court has big plans, including valet parking on third Fridays.

And given its recent history of leadership clashes and economic strain, this is more than the grass-roots artist neighborhood could have expected five years ago.

Five years ago, say some colonists, Towles Court came close to losing its artistic edge altogether.

Stimulating growth

Named for William Towles, the district's original developer in the 1920s, Towles Court has come a long way in the last 20 years. It was formerly made up of 18 mostly derelict houses, and by the late 1980s it had slipped into a state of mild decay.

Members of the city's planning department confronting the neighborhood at the time remember the largely residential neighborhood on the edge of Laurel Park as "not very attractive to people" at best -- and "completely rundown" at worst.

"Most of Laurel Park at that time, and many areas around downtown, were rundown, in part because the Sarasota Square Mall was new," says Mike Taylor, now general manager of the city's neighborhood and development services department. Many businesses in the downtown core, he says, ended up leaving the region for cheaper units in and around the new shopping center.

At the turn of the decade, however, Taylor was commissioned to find a solution. The result, he says, was a new zoning district plan, called "commercial residential transition," that the city hoped might stimulate growth.

"That zone allowed for commercial utilization if residential uses were provided on-site or in designated areas downtown," he says. "That way, people could either recycle those buildings or create new buildings."

That was the climate that acrylic painter Kathleen Carrillo discovered in the Towles Court neighborhood when she moved to Sarasota in 1994.

Not long after coming to town and opening a private gallery in the former Alley Cat lot off Fourth Street, she met developer NJ Olivieri, founder of the Horizon Mortgage Corp.

"He came to me and said, 'I have this area I'm thinking of doing something with,'" she recalls. "About six months later, I finally found it. I said, 'You know, this could be very interesting.'"

It was a "blighted area," she says, with buildings "practically falling down."

With the new zoning stipulations in mind, she set about rectifying that image. Within the year, she and Olivieri had splashed the majority of houses with a wash of funky and eye-catching shades: plum, orange, teal, green.

"We promoted it as a place for artists to come," she says, "and actually live and work in a mixed-use area. And in one year, we got people either to lease, purchase, buy or rent the places and start fixing them up." In turn, the Los Angeles native transformed one cottage into a small studio and gallery space. Then she raised a small home in front of it.

For roughly five years, the colony prospered, with Carrillo establishing an artists' association and leading Towles Court right into the economic boom of the early 21st century. Soon, however, several forces would prove problematic for the new artisan property owners.

And what had once lured them to funky Towles Court would eventually, ironically, become a burden.

'A losing battle'

According to Taylor, the city's mixed-use zoning plan, though somewhat encouraging, called for an "increasing scale" of residential space versus commercially used units. To varying ratios, this meant that the more commercial use settlers found for the downtown edge district, the more residential camps they would be required to pitch.

The city kept careful watch over the artists and how they were apportioning their property.

"It was a disaster," says Carrillo. "They were monitoring us like gestapos." At one point, she recalls, the city requested that she put exit signs in her home and handicap accessibility signs in her personal bathroom.

The zoning plan was recast in accordance with the Downtown Master Plan in 2005 -- allowing for "owner's choice" of either commercial or residential use in the downtown edge -- but by then, it was too late for many gallery owners.

"We were fighting a losing battle," she explains.

Carrillo sold her property in 2004. By then, it had quadrupled in value.

With the economy suddenly on the upswing, several gallery owners followed suit, selling their homes to private businesses. New Yorker Katharine Butler, who built her capacious olive-green gallery in 2000 and was association president for three years, recalls a period of "seismic shift."

"I was horrified to come back and find out that the place had been turned over to a whole bunch of newcomers who had no idea about its intent and history," she says.

Soon, a group of business owners organized a Towles Court Business Alliance aimed at reinvigorating the district with more commercial ventures.

"Essentially, Towles Court was always known as an artist colony," says Anand Pallegar, owner of the atLarge Inc. advertising agency on South Links Avenue. "But we were starting to see a diversification of the area."

According to Pallegar, who moved to Towles Court in 2004 to open a small coffee shop, the real estate spike made change to the artists association's mission somewhat inevitable.

"The mentality of the organization had to change as well," he explains. Together with lawyer Jonathan Greene, then with the Metamorphosis Gallery, local gallery owner Lou Schultz and, to some extent, Butler, Pallegar began redirecting funding toward advertising the area as a commercial district.

Not all gallery owners with history in the fledgling colony were entirely happy with the sea change.

"There were bad feelings for sure," says Butler, recalling her first experience with the changed leadership. "It was just this sort of frenzy to reinvent the wheel."

Treasurer Meg Pierce, who owns a small studio above the Lavanda Restaurant on Adams Lane, will not disclose how much money Towles Court lost during the period. But, she says, "the expenses were not being met by the income."

Schultz estimates that the alliance was ultimately "a few thousand" dollars in debt because not all gallery owners paid all dues.

The business alliance dissolved just over a year later.

"There was too much resistance from people," says Schultz. When Greene relinquished his post on the alliance and Pallegar left the area, Schultz says he gave up as well. "I had no desire to run it myself," he says. "I said, 'Listen, I resign, goodbye.'"

Schultz, who owns Canvas Cafe, says he now contributes regularly to the re-formed artists association, even contributing a third of valet expenses during in-season art walks. He also says he paid out of his own pocket to get a large portion of the defunct alliance's debt reduced.

Having returned to Towles Court, Pallegar is now a member of the artists association as well.

Schultz still feels vilified at times by his neighbors. His boisterous Drag Queen Bingo night was a source of some contention several months ago. But in Towles Court, he acknowledges, spirits are markedly better.

"I think it's improved in terms of attitude," he says. "This board seems to be more receptive to new ideas and things."

An evolving district

In January, the Towles Court community held its second elections since the business enterprise was abandoned.

Things are looking up, say members of the new leadership. The association, which subsists largely off the $300 annual membership fees for special advertising paid by 17 of its members, still struggles to stay afloat fiscally. But the treasurer says that the group has made back all the money it had lost.

"We have no debts," says Pierce. "We're doing much better, and are happy about it."

While the colony looks different and more commercial than before -- a psychiatrist, an event-planning firm and a dentist's office have moved in -- Pierce says artist membership has doubled in the last year.

And this is the revitalization that several starry-eyed new gallery owners are eager to profit from.

"It's been a different kind of feeling this time around," says Andrew Bowers, the manager of Deja Brew.

After several failed attempts to get their gallery space off the ground -- his former Equinox gallery crashed in 2003 and the ensuing Equinox frame shop closed last year -- he and his former wife are rebranding their Adams Lane location as a mixed arts hub, boutique and coffee shop.

Bowers is pleased that association leaders are more amenable to both his commercial and artistic pursuits.

"I feel like now there's more of a grasp on the fact that people need to be open and accepting of new ideas," he says.

And while Towles Court may still have its share of local disputes, like Canvas Cafe's Drag Queen Bingo nights and questions over signs, even those who have left the district are making light of old squabbles.

"You know how artists have egos," says Ramses Serrano, who closed his Serrano Contemporary Gallery in May after moving his vision to New York's art-laden Chelsea district. "It's hard for them to agree on things."