It’s a hot night in August, three months after tornadoes ripped through the Railroad Square art park, but the place is full of life. It’s a First Friday, which brings out the artists, musicians, shopkeepers, food trucks — and the crowds. Some of the buildings have patches on their roofs, but at least they have roofs. Railroad Square looks better than most people expected.
“It’s coming back a lot faster than I thought it would,” said Wendy Morgan, owner of Sidetrax, an art and music gallery. “I mean, they’re tearing down some of the buildings that were not salvageable. And they’ve put roofs on just about all the buildings that they’re going to redo now, and there are a lot of people coming back. It’s looking pretty good. I’m surprised it came back so fast.”
Since the storms, Railroad Square’s artists, patrons and shopkeepers have been deeply worried about the fate of the enclave. Destruction was all around. Power lines had ripped off the aluminum roofs. Debris littered the streets. Owners Adam and Lily Kaye worked hard to get their family business back up and running, but acknowledged they needed help and hoped local government would step in. The park’s resident business owners and their patrons agreed.
“We have a lot of hopes about putting it together,” said actor and director Jeff Mandel. “We’ve got a committee, and we’re trying to work with the landlords here, with the government, to try and find a way, because to lose this entirely would cut the heart out of the Tallahassee art scene. I mean, this is, this is the place, and we desperately, desperately need to bring it back.”
“Railroad Square is important to artists, especially,” said Jessica Blake, co-owner with her husband Roy of Blake’s Body Bars. “We know a lot of artists here. We’ve met a lot of artists here, and a lot of people just love it here. I think it’ll be here for awhile. I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
“The Kayes have said they can’t carry it all on their shoulders, and everybody understands that they’ve been carrying it a long time,” Mandel said. “They could have made a lot more money by selling it off years ago. They didn’t. They kept it going, and we’re all very grateful about that, but it’s beyond them to just plain restore it out of their own markets. So we’ve got to put together something. And it’s really time for the government.”
THE OFFER
County Commissioner Rick Minor has been helping the Kaye family look for a way to keep the park as an art district.
“The cities that are thriving right now, around the country, are those that offer some type of fun, funky, sometimes weird area to go where you can just go and relax and have fun, and mingle with folks that are artists or musicians, etc.,” Minor said in a June interview with WFSU. “We need something like that in Tallahassee. To have it right between FSU and FAMU, I think, is a perfect place. Yes, there are a lot of hoops to jump through, a lot of obstacles we need to overcome, but I think that land at Railroad Square is worth fighting for, to try to make sure it evolves into that type of community amenity that we all deserve.”
Railroad Square has come a long way from its humble beginnings. The longtime art park sits on prime real estate. It’s nestled between Florida A&M and Florida State Universities in an area that’s undergone considerable reinvention in recent years. The land is valuable—and everyone knows it. Now, the family is planning to take their offer to the Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). The city and some of its entities have been mum about buying it.
Lily Kaye spoke with WFSU’s Margie Menzel about her hopes for the business. Below is a transcript of that conversation.
THE INTERVIEW
Margie: Your family has been involved with Railroad Square for a long, long time, correct?
Lily: That’s right, we are the third-generation owners of Railroad Square, which was previously called the Downtown Industrial Park.
Margie: You’ve known it from all you can remember in your life.
Lily: That’s right. I remember going to my mom’s office, which had a purple carpet in it [laughs] because she was a very unique person, and stained-glass windows. And we’ve seen it evolve in amazing ways over the years.
Margie: So what is your role now? Explain what you do.
Lily: So my brother and I have been running Railroad Square since our mother passed away in 2002. I was just 19 years old, and Adam was just 16 years old. And we were very fortunate at the time to have some incredible people that were managing Railroad Square, and we learned the business and gradually took over more of the management of it.
Margie: Lily, why do you think Railroad Square is so important to people? It is. I mean, they have great passion for it.
Lily: Yeah, Railroad Square obviously does have a strong place in the hearts of many people in our community. And I think it’s because of different reasons for different people. I think that for some people who are longtime Tallahasseans, they have memories of, you know, someone that they knew that had a studio space. They have memories of going to art shows. I mean, it seems like anyone who’s been in Tallahassee for decades knew someone who was a business owner or an artist in Railroad Square. So I think for some people, it’s the historical connection.
I think for a lot more people, it’s because of the authenticity and uniqueness that Railroad Square provides to Tallahassee. You know, these days, we obviously do a lot of online shopping and big box retail, and we’re looking for unique, authentic experiences that make a city feel like you’re in a specific kind of place, instead of just Anywhere USA. And I think that Railroad Square really does that for Tallahassee. It makes it not Anywhere USA.
Margie: I saw every kind of person on Friday night, that’s for sure. So, for those people listening who might not know in detail what happened to Railroad Square on May 10th, could you describe the impact, please?
Lily: Yes, I think that most people have seen photos and videos of the destruction that was caused by the May 10th tornadoes. I mean, it was actually on the national news. I had someone call me from Ohio who said, ‘Was this your Railroad Square? Was this Tallahassee?’ And these were people that don’t even use social media, so they had actually seen it on the national news.
Arriving at Railroad Square after the tornadoes was probably the most surreal thing that I’ve ever seen. It actually felt like you were walking through a movie set. In psychology, there’s a term called derealization, and it means that you’re not really sure if you’re in reality. And that’s really what it felt like. It was totally crazy. There was metal all over the ground, you know, sharp pieces of metal. There were nails all over the ground. There were power lines, you know, hanging from everywhere. There were power poles in half. There were trees that were snapped in half. Probably the most memorable image for me, from after the tornadoes, was looking up in this pine tree and seeing pieces of metal roofing that were wrapped around the branches of the pine tree, and it looked like a giant had walked through and like, decorated his Christmas tree, like with pieces of metal from the roofs of our buildings.
Margie: There have been all kinds of ideas thrown out about what can be done to get Railroad Square back up on its feet. Friday night, I did hear from you know, some of the people who have shops there, how pleased they were that things had been going faster than they expected for them to get back into their places. Of the plans that you have heard being discussed, which ones do you like and which ones do you think will not fly?
Lily: Well, we have now gotten Railroad Square up to a place where it is up and running again. We definitely want people to know that there are a number of buildings that are still closed. But just as of last week, we finished the eighth roofing project that we were doing. And so, over this next month, in August, we expect all of the spaces, except for the buildings, the two buildings that are being demolished, to be able to reopen. So, by the beginning of September, I think that Railroad Square will look completely alive again.
And we do want people to know that there’s a lot of businesses that are still open now that really need the support of patrons. The public, I think, has been confused about if Railroad Square is still closed, if I should go there or not. So we definitely encourage people to go to Railroad Square. You know, not just on First Fridays. But over the weekends, there’s lots of businesses that are, you know, trying to stay on their feet.
In terms of the future, Adam and I put out a statement on the website that explains our current position on the future of Railroad Square. We decided just after the tornadoes that it really wasn’t going to be realistic for us to just continue doing what we’ve done for the last 20 years, being the stewards of Tallahassee’s art district. And that’s a very difficult thing to do for a for-profit business to be the stewards of the art district without any kind of public support. I should say, without any kind of public financial support. Obviously, there’s a ton of public support. So, it’s very hard for us as private business owners to provide Tallahassee’s art district. We get no, you know, tax breaks. We get no government funding, aside from a small amount of grant money that goes to the nonprofit that puts on the First Fridays each month. That’s not the Railroad Square business. So COCA [the Council on Culture and Arts] does provide some grants that the nonprofit ACERS [Arts & Cultural Experiences of Railroad Square] has been able to get to put on First Fridays.
But besides that, you know, there’s nothing that allows the rents to be subsidized so that they’re affordable to artists and small business owners. You know, that’s something that we have always had to figure out how to do. How do you cut costs so that you can keep the rents at a place where the type of tenant that you want to see is there? and that makes it so, you know, we can’t always do all the repairs we want to do. We can’t do all the upgrades we want to do, although we have done a lot of upgrades over the last few years, especially. So, moving forward, we’ve gotten Railroad Square back up to a place where it can continue to be inhabited, but we are not going to be able to run Railroad Square in its current footprint for much longer. And so we have given local government the first right of refusal to purchase some of the property in Railroad Square. The maximum amount of acreage that could be purchased comes out to about 6.8 acres. And there’s a CRA meeting that’s coming up on August 22 and there’s going to be a number of people that are going to propose that the CRA board asks their staff to look into options for how the CRA could invest in Railroad Square, invest in owning part of Railroad Square. We’re not talking about giving private business owners money. We’re not talking about, you know, subsidizing our business. We’re talking about, this is a valuable piece of property, a valuable asset to the community, just like the city owns parks right? Just like the city owns an amphitheater in the middle of town, the city could also own part of the art district to ensure that it remains a creative district for decades to come.
Margie: Shop owners that I spoke with on Friday night talked about how important it was that the rent was low enough for them to afford it in order to have their shops open…
Lily: Absolutely.
Margie: So [is] this is something that the city would have to subsidize to keep those folks going? Is that what you’re thinking?
Lily: Well, there’s lots of different models of how arts districts are run, and there’s information out there about, you know, what other cities have done to have art districts. So it’s not like we have to create something that’s totally new and wild. The Americans for the Arts even has a website dedicated to how to create a creative district in a city. So right now, the city or the CRA, some kind of local government, needs to be the ones to step up to make some kind of purchase. But after they make that purchase, after they they secure the land, there’s a lot of different ways that it could be managed in the future. You know, it could, it could lease out space to nonprofit organizations. It could find a developer to do some kind of specific project that they want done. You know, there would be a master planning element that would need to happen, and some kind of amazing creative district that combines part of Historic Railroad Square and some new development that provides, you know, new resources, new resources for our community. Obviously, there’s been a desire for a performing arts center in the city for however many years we’ve been discussing it. This would be an incredible location for that.
Margie: Would you and Adam still want to have a role?
Lily: Our intention is to retain part of the property of Railroad Square. We have invested a lot of money in modernizing some of the buildings, and we do intend to keep some of the buildings and to continue, you know the uses as they are now. There’s food and beverage there, I’m talking about in the center of Railroad Square around the green space, there’s food and beverage options, there’s creative local retail, and there’s art uses. And so we have identified specific buildings that would be retained, and we’ve identified which other areas we would be willing to sell to the local government. And I understand that local governments typically take and need a long time to go through master planning processes. Unfortunately, we are not in the position to sit around for years and wait for that to happen.
So, what we are proposing, what would have to happen is that local government would have to go ahead and make a decision and purchase the property and then do the master planning. And some people might feel uncomfortable with that, but really they’re purchasing a valuable piece of property that’s only going to increase in value and they could do anything with it. I mean, it’s not going to be a burden to taxpayers, you know, if they bought it and then decided they made an incredible mistake, they could sell it and make money off of it. So I think that this is something that everyone should be behind, because basically, it’s an opportunity to land-bank the property that currently creates the city’s art district, and then the city can go through whatever long process needs to occur to re-imagine the creative district of Tallahassee.
THE CHALLENGE
The task of securing public support has been challenging. While County Commissioner Minor has been vocal in his support for the park, the response from other local officials has been less enthusiastic. And former City Commissioner Gil Ziffer, who served on the CRA as part of his duties, says that if he were considering the Railroad Square purchase, he would be looking for a few specifics:
“The first thing, I’d like to know their skin in the game,” Ziffer said. “How much are they putting into this? Because if they’re looking for an investment from the city or from the CRA [we] need to know what they’re putting in. The other thing is, I’d like to know how many jobs it’s going to create, how much of a difference is it going to make in that area.”
Ziffer says there’s no question “the site itself is cool,” but he questions whether it serves as a local cultural center for the arts.
“I would say, let’s find that out. It is, though, on some level, very successful, and I give the Kayes tremendous amount of credit for continuing to house and provide opportunities for the arts community, because I know they do this at discounted rents. But for the CRA to invest funds in an area that, quite frankly, has already come back, I’m not sure how open I would be to putting a lot of those funds there.”
The Kayes very much disagree.
“The reality of the situation is that the question should not be ‘How many jobs would this create?’ said Lily Kaye in a statement to WFSU. “But rather, ‘How many jobs would be lost if the majority of Railroad Square was sold to a housing developer?’”
The Kayes, along with other backers of the art park, will make their case to the CRA on August 22nd.
