New Jersey suburbs working to provide affordable, attractive housing for arts professionals

By Leonardo Vazquez

It's not just major cities that want to attract artists.  There are efforts in Rahway and South Brunswick to provide affordable housing for arts professionals.  And you can influence what that housing might look like or offer: developers in both communities are looking for input from artists now.

Rahway, a small, older suburb about 35 minutes from New York City,  has been working to attract arts for two decades.  Leaders there have helped convert an old vaudeville theater into the Union County Performing Arts Center (and an old truck repair garage into the Hamilton Stage), attracted a hotel, and built up a thriving downtown.  These were among the biggest projects in a wide-ranging effort to make Rahway an arts center in North Jersey.

The latest effort -- affordable housing for artists -- is designed to address a common problem when the arts revitalize communities:  the places get too expensive for artists.  Rahway is collaborating with the Actors Fund and other partners to find out what working artists want in quality, affordable housing.

Take the Rahway Artists Housing Survey.

In South Brunswick, about halfway between New York City and Philadelphia, the Aging in Place Partnership is seeking to develop an arts-oriented community for artists and those who enjoy creative works.   The partnership is also looking for ideas for how to design the community.

Take the South Brunswick arts community survey.

One of the more interesting aspects about these efforts is that they are not in the places where you typically see concentrations of artists -- such as struggling city neighborhoods, university towns or hidden-away artist colonies.  Rahway and South Brunswick are very similar to a lot of suburban towns that developed their characters in the middle to late decades of the 20th century.

It will be interesting to see if these places attract artists who on paper are more like their professional counterparts in traditional arts-oriented communities or who are more like their neighbors in the suburbs.