What is Salida Space to Create?
Salida Space to Create is a part of an affordable workforce housing initiative created by Colorado Creative Industries (CCI). For more information on CCI's entire Space to Create program visit https://oedit.colorado.gov/space-to-create-colorado.
The Salida Space to Create project is a partnership between Artspace Projects Inc., Space to Create Colorado, the City of Salida, and the Salida Creative District. The aim of the project is to provide affordable workforce housing options in the Salida area, who struggle to find affordable housing in the area including, but not limited to artists and creatives.
The Salida Space to Create: '1st & D' project is a part of the Space to Create Colorado program, run by Colorado Creative Industries (CCI). The initiative focuses on developing much needed rural workforce housing anchored in select creative districts across the state of Colorado.
Follow Your Heart to Salida: The Fifth Space to Create Community
The ‘1st & D’ Apartments site is located at 1st St and D St, currently a vacant lot. Built around the turn of the century, the site had previously also been apartments, but fell into disrepair over the years until it was finally razed this year. The .46-acre parcel in downtown Salida was acquired by the City of Salida in mid-2022.
See Our Places for more information about us and examples of some of our projects around the country.
Opportunities for community feedback on design options for the project will be provided this fall and further refinement of the design will continue through early 2024. Once funding is secured, the project will be bid out for construction (target Summer 2024). Ideally, the project will be ready for move-in sometime in 2025. Stay tuned to the City of Salida’s website for additional information as it becomes available.
It is very apparent to any outsider that Salida is strongly defined around the arts and its National Historic District with more than 300 intact historic buildings from the turn of the last century. Salida’s creative sector is not hidden nor mysterious or underground. Salida shouts creativity and independent businesses as much as it shouts its other natural attributes.
Each town in the Space to Create program has different community goals and needs that they hope to address through an affordable live/work and creative commercial space project. With a growing creative sector and a thriving downtown commercial district, Salida is facing increasing affordability issues for both housing and commercial spaces. The time is right to address space needs in Salida and ensure there is affordable space dedicated to the creative workforce, who have made Salida the destination it is today. According to the Salida Chamber of Commerce, “Salida owes its vibrancy as an artsy tourist destination to a small community of artists who settled here in the 1990s following the decline of the railroad and mining industries. As the economic downturn drove away retailers, artists transformed empty storefronts into spacious art studios and galleries.”
Artspace’s Engagement
Artspace conducted focus groups, and a public meeting virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic and visited in-person to tour existing arts facilities and potential buildings/sites and launch the Creative Space Needs Survey in January 2022. During the six weeks the survey was open there were 319 total survey respondents of which 259 (81%) indicated an interest in at least one type of creative space in Salida. The majority (72%) of respondents are current permanent residents, 8% are seasonal residents, and 7% lived in Salida in the past.
Preliminary Feasibility Study and Creative Space Needs Survey Findings
Read the full report from May 2022.
Photos, top to bottom: Jeffrey Beall, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Artspace.
