UrbanTurf Wants To Know: Would You Buy a Live/Work Space?

• October 23, 2013
• 4 Comments

by Shilpi Paul

The founders of E/L Studios in their live/work carriage house.

Over the past few years, UrbanTurf has featured a variety of live/work spaces, from a renovated carriage house that is both a home and the office of an architectural firm, a rowhouse with a retail space on the ground level, and new-construction artist studios with enough space to live and create art.

Yesterday, condo developers Lock 7 tried to gauge the demand for such spaces in DC.

We thought we would pose the question to our readers. So, UrbanTurf wants to know: would you buy a live/work space? Whether it’s a condo above a storefront, or a big loft with a studio area, is a live/work set-up appealing to you? How many people out there like the concept so much that they would buy such a space?

Please respond to our quick poll, then let us know in the comments why you answered what you did.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/urbanturf_wants_to_know_would_you_buy_a_live_work_space/7727

4 Comments

1. Rick said at 5:26 pm on Wednesday October 23, 2013:
   Yes... Having a 15-second commute down a flight of steps would be considered the holy grail. Only roadblock to such a setup is turning a hobby into a business.

1. Justin S said at 10:32 pm on Wednesday October 23, 2013:
   My "yes" vote hinges on a couple of gotchya's. 1.) Workshop space needs to be priced accordingly. There are probably 200 artists in the whole country that could legitimately afford DC real estate prices to use as an income-producing workspace. We're not lawyers... we can't be blowing $400+ per square foot on painting space. 2.) Retail/gallery space would need to be priced to meet demand. There's been a rash of ridiculous "artist spaces" opening up on the outskirts of town in places where no one who buys art would ever go. It doesn't matter if a place gets 2,000 heads walking buy it every day if it's in Anacostia... none of those heads are going to plunk down $2,000 for a painting. Too many of these spaces end up being advertisements for the community, paid for at the expense of the artists renting them. So if it's workspace that can accommodate an artist's rate of income, or a studio space that either legitimately gets in front of real buyers or costs so little that non-existent returns don't much matter, than Yes.

1. saladman8283 said at 5:31 pm on Thursday October 24, 2013:
   Many years ago I put a contract on a condo in The Mohawk (400 block of M St. NW, Giorgio Furioso's first project). The condo was massive and interesting, and the neighborhood had a lot of potential. However, the inspector noted that 3 of the 4 exterior walls needed major repointing, there was no money in the reserves to pay for the work, and the other owners were not prepared to pay for it. Sadly, I walked away. I wonder if the building's financial situation would have been better if many of the residents were not artists.

1. BJ McKellar said at 3:58 am on Monday October 28, 2013:
   I would love something like that, but with the family, it would need to be a 3 bed unit. I commute to Brookland from my home in Columbia Md. I'd save almost a 2 hour commute everyday. Plus I'd save money on gas, lunch and so much more,