Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.

You have to love the really idiosyncratic corners of a city. The hundred year-old oddities with rich histories and lovely faces that look wholly out of place amid more recent arrivals. The Warehouse Theater is just such a place. Sitting quiet and unassuming on a small stretch of 7th Street NW near the hulking new Washington Convention Center, the Warehouse has been home to an extraordinary variety of art installations, from rock bands to photography exhibits, theater and film to sculpture. It’s one of the quirky, independent places that help to reveal the way that art shapes a city’s identity.

So it was quite distressing to hear that revisions in neighborhood tax assessments had raised the complex’s property tax bill 500%, making it all but impossible for the Warehouse to survive in its current location. After the news broke, many rushed to offer their assistance, but the owners, Molly and Paul Ruppert, haven’t yet decided whether to stay put, move but lease the building to others, or sell altogether. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine the long-suffering family turning down the money; even if they could hang on, the city’s tax policy will ensure that the spaces around them are deadened, full of high margin chain businesses or office buildings. Development didn’t have to kill the Warehouse, but the city made sure that it did.

Which is kind of funny. Because now that someone has convinced the city that encouraging art is a good way to fuel development on the cheap, D.C. seems prepared to shower area artists with attention. Which might or might not be a good thing.

This week, the Washington Business Journal published a lengthy piece on the city’s efforts to turn its artistic talent base into development. The story is full of groan inducing passages. A quick sample:

“There’s a multiplier effect with actors, singers and dancers. They create cool,” D.C. Economic Partnership CEO Steve Moore says. “You want to bump into them at the grocery store or at restaurants. And a whole new employment group finds themselves in the District. They want to be around the creative class. That may be the beginning of a whole new identity for the District.”

These attitudes stem directly from the proselytization of Richard Florida, whose 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class encouraged local governments to do anything and everything to attract the young, hip, and educated. Economists have long understood the importance of what the profession, with typical grace, calls human capital. Urban economic geographers are well aware that concentrating human capital into urban areas is a good way to generate economic growth, but Florida has distilled such advice into a mantra, a magic bullet that cities must embrace lest they fall behind in the global race for total creative class supremacy. The District has come late to the bandwagon, but seems determined now to follow Florida’s advice, identifying our creative advantages and figuring out how to turn them into development gold.

Photo by blueiris2006