Bell Artspace Campus

New Life for a Tremé Neighborhood Center

2100 Ursulines Avenue Tremé New Orleans, LA, 70119

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Overview

For more than a hundred years, the two-block Bell School campus anchored New Orleans’ Tremé neighborhood as a place for education, music training, and cultural development. Abandoned since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, these five extraordinary buildings have been given new life in phase one of a two-phase project that hopes to restore not only the bricks and mortar but also the former Bell School’s historic role as a center of the community. The Bell Artspace Campus project transforms the three largest buildings of the former Bell School into 79 units of affordable live/work housing for low- to moderate-income artists, cultural workers, and families. The project also reestablishes many of the former Bell School's creative and common spaces (e.g., band room, gym, and chapel building) for creative use by the Bell Artspace Campus residents and commercial tenants. 

Phase one of the Bell Artspace Campus project was developed in parthership with  Providence Community Housing, a non-profit that has built more than a thousand affordable housing units in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Other supporters include both the City and the Housing Authority of New Orleans, Junebug Productions, New Orleans Master Crafts Guild, Make Music Nola, and Tremé4Tremé. 

Architect: Billes Partners

Contractor: Gibbs Construction

Community Partner: The City of New Orleans; Louisiana Housing Corporation; Louisiana Office of Community Development; Housing Authority of New Orleans; New City Partnership; Greater New Orleans Foundation; Faubourg Laffite Tenants Association; St. Peter Claver Community; Junebug Productions; Tremé4Tremé; New Orleans Master Crafts Guild; Creative Alliance of New Orleans; Make Music NOLA

Development Partner: Providence Community Housing

Funders: The Kresge Foundation; The Ford Foundation; Stavros Niarchos Foundation; Gibbs Construction; ArtPlace America; The Greater New Orleans Foundation; JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Financial Partners: Raymond James Tax Credit Funds, Inc. 

est. 2018

Type of Development:

Live/Work Artist Housing

Number of Units:

79

Types of Units:

One-, Two- and Three-Bedrooms

Total Project Cost:

$37.4M

Features:

Green Space; Rehearsal Space; Exhibition Hallways