Lauren Holt looks over photographs by Jennifer Kodis that are part of the 2008 RISCA Fellowship Exhibit at the Machines With Magnets Gallery, 400 Main St. in downtown Pawtucket.  Holt manages Machines with Magnets and lives at 400 Main St., in a space  she calls a multi-use live-work art facility.    Times photo/Butch Adams

By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET — The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution is now being called an Art Town, according to a national business magazine for visual artists.

In the March edition of Art Calendar, the city of Pawtucket made it into a feature called “Art Towns — 10 Great Places for Working Artists.”
Kim Hall, editor of the Orlando, Fla.-based magazine, said this is the debut of the “Art Towns” listing, but she hopes it will become an annual feature, if not even more often.
Hall said she was aware of Pawtucket’s reputation as an “artist-friendly” place, as well as being one of nine cities in Rhode Island that offer tax incentives to working artists. “There are only a few areas of the country that are doing things like that,” she said.
Hall called Pawtucket “a model city” for other municipalities that want to reinvent themselves as “art towns.”
“They have a great program and it is very established,” she said. “I would say it is one of the most solid places for an artist to live.”
Hall also noted that Herb Weiss, Pawtucket’s economic and cultural affairs officer, spoke about Pawtucket’s program to city officials in Oil City, Penn., another industrial area that wanted to transform itself into an arts-conscious community.
Oil City made it to the magazine’s top 10 list as well.
Hall said Pawtucket has been successful because city officials have considered the artists from a business perspective and are committed to helping them promote their careers. In contrast, other towns have done things like attracting one or two artists and focusing simply on how they will bring in money to the community.
Weiss, who came on board in Pawtucket in 1999, is credited by many as instrumental in the city’s cultural transformation, along with Mayor James Doyle and the city’s planning director, Michael Cassidy.
Weiss said the process began over a decade ago when the Rhode Island General Assembly signed off on legislation allowing for the establishment of a 307-acre arts and entertainment district in Pawtucket designed to encourage the re-use and redevelopment of the city’s numerous disused mill buildings.
“We wanted to draw people to the area to create economic vitality,” said Weiss. “This article in Art Calendar is a reflection of the buzz and sizzle that is occurring nationwide about Pawtucket being a great city for working artists. It’s a concrete example that what we’re doing here is working.”
Weiss points out, however, that the transformation did not happen overnight. It took more than a decade to put together the initiative, build a database of available property, establish a grant program, and create an approach toward guiding people more smoothly through the regulatory process of mill redevelopment while ensuring the safety of those involved in the renovations.
Weiss said the key concept from the very beginning was to look at artists as small business owners and find ways to help them be commercially viable. “They have creativity and talent, but they also have to be business people,” Weiss said. “A lot of cities and towns consider art as more ethereal, but we’ve always looked at it as a business.”
Mayor James Doyle, who spearheaded the arts movement, said “It’s been a boon. It’s been a salvation to us to us in many ways.” He said that when the city’s once-thriving textile industry dried up, the city was left with a slew of abandoned mills. Having them unoccupied and falling into disrepair made them potential firetraps and public safety hazards.
Doyle said that having developers redo the mills, and having artists follow as owners and tenants, has helped restore the city’s economy while mitigating safety hazards.. “Having these mills occupied makes a great deal of difference,” he noted.
Randy Rosenbaum, executive director of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, said, “It’s great that Pawtucket is getting this incredible recognition.” He said the city’s renaissance is largely due to Mayor James Doyle’s commitment to the arts, and the realization on the part of city leaders “that an arts-friendly community impacts positively on the quality of life and the economy of a city.”
Steve Kumins, president of the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative, said the city has done “a phenomenal job” in finding uses for its mill spaces. He noted that literally hundreds of artists have come here to either live and work or both in recent years, but it hasn’t happened in a vacuum.
“The city government has been really helpful in making this happen,” Kumins said.  “City leaders have gone out of their way to make it attractive and friendly to working artists.
He particularly credited Weiss with his tireless efforts to match artists with appropriate spaces, saying it has brought about “huge and noticeable results.”
As for the artists themselves, Mimo Gordon Riley and Gretchen Dow Simpson, both nationally recognized, were among the earliest settlers of the city’s arts and entertainment district. The two women pooled their resources with two other individuals and purchased a former donut shop on Montgomery Street.
“Herb (Weiss) found us a building that we bought and renovated, and I’m thrilled with it now,” Riley said. “I have a great, big studio that was reasonably affordable in a building that I own and can build up equity in.”
She said that she and Simpson, also a transplant, are both very happy with their move. “What endeared me to Pawtucket was, there is this small group of people who are just dedicated to making this a really wonderful place to be.”
Donald Jerola, a sculptor whose work graces the riverbank at Slater Mill as well as in Slater Park, moved to the city from his native Pennsylvania.
Although he doesn’t live in his work space and eventually wants to relocate his business to Cape Cod , he said Pawtucket is “a wonderful incubator” for artists. “Pawtucket is the only city in Rhode Island that is totally behind the arts, and I can say that from experience,” he stated.
Leonard Lavoie, of RICIR, is a real estate agent who has helped hundreds of artists relocate to Pawtucket. He said much of the influx to the city occurred when prices of old mill buildings in neighboring providence began to skyrocket and city officials began to clamp down on mill dwellers — many of whom were living in abandoned mills illegally. Stepped-up enforcement accompanied the stringent fire code regulations enacted after The Station nightclub tragedy.
He was there from the beginning to witness the shift of artists from Providence to Pawtucket, and commented that “It’s been an interesting 12 years.” He said that while Providence might want to keep its artists, the higher price of mill space in the city’s capital simply can’t compete with the more affordable space in Pawtucket.
Lavoie likened Pawtucket to Portland, Maine, a similar draw for artists, but said Portland is already undergoing a gentrification that is causing real estate prices to escalate.
“The live/work spaces are in demand,” Lavoie said. I get calls every day from people from out of state asking about Pawtucket.”