The Denver City wants to change the laws on the books to keep the local art community within the city, But for this, the unpermitted DIY art spaces in the city would have come forward to collaborate with the city.
The “conditional certificate of occupancy,” a tool that could make Denver the first city in the Untied States to grant legal status to DIY art spaces that do not have proper city limits
For the next two years, the unpermitted art space can go through a city verification and receive a conditional certificate of occupancy to bring the building up to code after no serious life-threatening concerns.
The executive director of Denver Community Planning and Development, Brad Buchanan said that serious life-safety concerns would require to be immediately addressed, which could mean that the place is not safe to live in. But displacement would be the last resort.
“The truth is, vacating rarely happens,” he said.
The program is being setup not just for art space, but also for galleries, showrooms, offices, retail and performance spaces with an occupancy of under 300 people.
Denver is also exploring ways to make compliance process inexpensive for spaces.
“We understand that resources are a huge challenge for these spaces. That’s why these folks are in unpermitted spaces,” Buchanan said.
So far the city has reached out to few agencies that could provide pro bono contracting and consulting.
The ultimate success of the program would be to see that how many spaces actually come forward. The city said that it is working with Rhinoceropolis and Glob, the two spaces were closed last year, and tenants were evicted. Now the tenants hope for positive experiences in the program and it will encourage participants to spread the world.
“We know that we’re going to have to have some success for people to believe in this,” Buchanan said.
But before the city gets the chance to execute this plan, they have got to make it law. The proposal goes Denver City Council’s SAFEHOUSE committee on June 28, if proceeds then it would need to be approved by the whole council.
AMandeep
