A Goodyear tire service building was given a second, albeit temporary, life earlier this year as it awaited demolition. The property’s owner Crescent Communities handed the keys over to some Charlotte artists. They were supposed to be out by now, but they got an extension. WFAE’s Sarah Delia has this update on the tire shop turned art space.
Since this past summer, the Goodyear building on East Stonewall in Charlotte’s Uptown has morphed into an artistic microcosm. Early on it served as a space for artist residencies and these days it’s also a venue for dancers and even a local pop up shop.
But this project was only supposed to go on for three months while the building awaited demolition. Construction was delayed and that meant the artists could continue working on their creations. So here we are near the end of December and the building is bustling.
Transforming an empty and unused space into a functioning art studio for local artists wasn’t something Amy Herman and her artistic partners in crime, AmyBagwell and Graham Carew did on a whim. They had been thinking about it for awhile.
"The idea at its core is very simple. You have an empty space. You put people in the empty space to activate it. I think people are behind that. There’s a lot of empty spaces in Charlotte and there’s not a lot of art spaces in Charlotte," said Herman.
She points out they’ve always known they’d have to leave. But they were excited when the deadline got pushed back to the end of January.
The building’s essentially on life support. There are some leaks, the heating system has its quirks, and many of the lights don’t work. Still artists have been creating and adding work onto the building much of which will go down when the building is demolished.
Herman says they’ve been approached by other developers who have empty spaces they’d love Charlotte artists to inhabit and work in. But none have offered the unique combination Crescent did: a free space, all utilities paid, and stipends for the artists.
