from Sky news.

This is connections.

I'm Patrick Hoskin in for Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in 1900, when Jay Hungerford Smith built what became a soda sirup factory on East Main Street and now stands as the Hungerford Building, 3.4 acres of interlocking structures and space that once housed many artists studios.

It was a central hub of the Rochester arts scene for decades, and the site of many First Friday gallery nights.

Woodworkers, painters and sculptors all called the space Home, but many, though not all, have since left.

Over the past three years, the space has seen a decline in tenants and this has coincided with new ownership.

Real estate investor Peter Hungerford bought the building in 2022 for $7.7 million, and as wlky's Gino Fanelli reports and pieces for both WXXI News and City Magazine, conditions inside the Hungerford building have deteriorated since then.

I just want to read a little bit of what you wrote in the piece in Citi titled The Community Loss a little bit of scene setting water leaks openly from pipes throughout the building.

Trash and human excrement litter the hallways, homeless encampments have popped up in the building, and the scent of stagnant water and mold is omnipresent.

Most studios are now dark, their inhabitants diffusing outward into various venues around the city.

One artist and former tenant now runs her studio out of a spare room in her and her partner's apartment.

Again, that's from Gino Nellie's reporting in the February issue of City magazine, which is on newsstands now.

You can also read that story online at Rock City Match.com.

So we're here to talk about what happened to the Hungerford.

How can we quantify what exactly has been lost by, again, some, though not all artists moving out, being evicted in some cases, or simply kind of having to endure these worsening conditions.

And it's a kind of help tell that story.

I'm joined by Gino Fanelli, WXXI investigative reporter.

Gino, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Buckley is also here.

She's the owner of East Main Clay, which has its studio and storefront in the Hungerford Building.

So thanks very much.

And Blue Seats is here.

Blue is the executive director and the curator of the Rochester Contemporary Art center, which administers First Friday Blue.

Thanks for joining.

Thank you.

later this hour, we'll also be joined by Peter Hungerford, the founder and managing principal of FF Realty Capital and the owner of the Hungerford Building.

first up, I think it might just be good, maybe, Jennifer, to talk a little bit about how long have you been, at the Hungerford Building.

How long have you had your studio in there?

I've been in the building either sharing a studio or having one of my own.

for close to 20 years.

okay.

And most recently, in 2020, I took over an old garage and did an upgrade and moved down to the street level.

So I have a shop.

And what were the what were the conditions like when you moved in versus what they are now?

I mean, that might be a very clear example for someone who's been around for so long.

Well, it's the building itself is old, and most of the artists, knew going in that, you know, it was an old factory and, but it was something that, you know, we all could make our own.

And just really, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Would you just by playing that microphone just a tiny bit closer to you?

Okay.

Thank you.

I want to make sure everyone can hear me.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So, just, you know, we all moved in, quite a few moved in early on, and it developed into more of a place where everybody could go because the pricing, you know, per square foot was good for, starving artist.

and then blues started the first Friday program and we joined in right away.

And then that's when it took off.

And the building was always full of tenants, and people were waiting for, space to open up so that they could move in and be a part of the community that we had, which was the the vital part of the building was the community.

Yeah.

I think that's such a key piece of this.

And what I'd like to talk about, because there's we talk about the physical space is one aspect of this, but the actual community being made up of the people, the artists being surrounded by all that in there.

What was that atmosphere like?

Sort of at its peak?

I mean, you're talking about people coming in, people celebrating First Friday, the traffic, the you know, the excitement, the sharing of ideas.

What was that?

What was that atmosphere like?

It was nice because, my studio well, I was on the second floor for a while and then moved up to the fourth floor to a studio of my own, not having a partner in the studio.

And it was just you knew everybody down the hall, everybody had their doors open.

You could walk down and have a discussion or just say good morning to the other tenants in the building that were in their studios working.

it was just, you know, it was a relaxed atmosphere.

the owner at that time was, you know, he was aware and we were all aware of the conditions of some of the things.

And he would repair it and put a Band-Aid on things or totally, you know, repair, certain things.

but, you know, now it's you're lucky if they even look to see where that leak is coming from when there's a reported leak.

such a big.

But you mentioned first Friday, and we have back here.

Would you mind?

maybe.

I mean, I think everyone, especially folks who are invested in the arts community, are aware, but maybe can you speak a little bit about kind of the mission and then as it relates to like how that practically, bears out in terms of people going places, people kind of sharing ideas and sharing community arts?

Yeah, focused engagement.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So, as you mentioned, the director of another organization, Rocco.

but we also outside of our programs and exhibitions in our facility, we administer and organize and started the citywide gallery night.

Many cities have a gallery night.

We started this in 2008 with like five venues the Hunger for joined on very early after a few months, and had been a critical, integral part of building the whole initiative from the beginning as such a big building there were, there were, I think upwards of 170 studio right around there.

some of those First Fridays say back five, seven years ago, they were super active.

There might have been 50 plus studios open on one night.

so, first Friday, is intended to put all of the small venues in our community on the same schedule for three hours a month.

We're really focused.

We operate it as, a coalition of small venue organizers.

we come together periodically to talk about the mission, talk about any, multi-venue collaborations.

But the core of it is so simple.

It's about, defining one evening for the small venues to shine.

and the Hungerford was one of those critical pillars of the small venues.

There were many other.

And there are many other bars, small gallery studios that open their doors.

we typically have upwards of 30, 35 venues open each first Friday.

that be all that all the all the first Friday stuff is very positive right now.

There were like 12 venues that joined last year.

So that's going very strong.

but I would say that the loss of the culture of the Hungerford and, and the sheer number of artists who've been displaced, is, is really leaving a heavy heart on our community.

and, and it's, it's casting a bit of a shadow.

Have, you know, we all have a lot more to say about that, for sure.

do you want me to continue?

I, I would love if you could talk a little bit about that casting of that shadow.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think that, as Jen alluded to, and I'll touch on some of the, some of my awareness and others about similar situations in other cities.

There's nothing really special about the Hungerford.

You mentioned it as its original construction and what its original light industry was.

Right.

But really it's just a big box.

Okay.

It's just a simple industrial box with many small spaces, okay?

And many of us know that a number of other cities have 1 or 2 big buildings like this that artists have inhabited.

There's really nothing special about them.

It's the people, it's the culture.

It's the countless artists who invested this big brick box with their blood, sweat and tears.

and we're talking in emotional terms now, but also they are small businesses.

They have invested, capital in their building.

They've moved printing presses there.

they haven't they've built their, entrepreneurship or their career in some cases, national reputations in those buildings.

So really what we're talking about is many, many people collectively breathing life into to a big empty box.

And it became, over time known as the Hungerford.

Nobody knows, its original founding as a, juice company or whatever.

That original production was.

Right?

We know it as the place where artists were, and I hazard to say that most artists in this community either had an exhibition there, went through the doors at one point, collaborated with someone.

so you really can't overstate its impact.

And that's largely because it was inexpensive.

and the previous property owner was, like, relatively supportive, kind of laissez faire, about about providing an empty container for artists to build culture around.

And that's such an illuminating context to give, because it really stands in pretty stark contrast with, you know, what I read from your reporting, Gino?

But also like maybe can you talk a little bit about your impressions of entering what it's like now and, and.

Yeah.

so I think it's worth noting that even at the peak of what the Hungerford was as an art haven, it was never a high end building.

It was always kind of an older building that it was low cost for a lot of artists that were starting out.

And it really that I think that very fact is what made it such a vibrant community.

It gave and it was an entry way for people that were working and creating their studios, earnestly taking art as a career, trying to build something.

It was a place where they could connect.

And, that was really what was special about that place.

many years ago.

But now, I think about when, when I first went back into the building, in January, we spent about 3.5 hours there, me and Max shortly and, a tenant in the building and went through every floor and looked at pretty much every public space you could access there.

And I've been in a lot of bad buildings over the course of my career, a lot of them, and seen some awful stuff in those buildings.

And how people live.

This was one of the worst I've seen in a long time, just from the sheer level of, the the safety of that building, the, the biohazards and the way it was had very minimal security for people that, anyone could walk in.

We just walked in.

There was no lock or anything that was stopping us from walking into the building.

So there were homeless encampments that had been set up in the hallways.

There was, human feces.

All the toilets did not fly, so they were actively filled with excrement.

the waste lines in the basement were just openly flowing into the floor.

Mousetraps everywhere.

You could see evidence of, you know, vermin all over the place that infested with pigeons.

it's just virtually anything that could go wrong with a building had gone wrong.

And it's incredible to me if these problems for an old building exist and they take maintenance to prevent them from getting to this point.

it had been less than three years since the building had been transferred.

Ownership.

And how it had descended so quickly is, it's really it's, it's a fascinating study and how, how fast these things can deteriorate and this with very fast deterioration and, so my initial impression after spending so much time in there for the first day was one, I do not want to be in here anymore.

And to like this is beyond I there was a lot of concern back in 2022 when the building was bought.

Peter Hungerford have a pretty, spotty track record, have a landlord in the city of Rochester, just to say the least.

And I don't think, any of the expectations or concerns that the time were at the level of what the building actually turned out as.

And so we again, we talk about that the different.

Right?

We're talking about the physical place.

But when it's in that sort of a condition as you're describing, do you know, that translates to the loss of the people as you were talking about blue.

And I think Jennifer like and you can see that bear out in, in terms of, you know, your own economics too, just being one example.

Right?

Correct.

when Peter first, took over the building, the tenants all got a letter, on April 29th of 2022, and he gave us a list of things that he was going to take care of.

new paving of the parking lot expansion space in the lower level of the building, meaning the basement, new bathrooms on all floors, modernizing the elevators, renewing the brick and facade, new signage and upgrading entrances and new property website with online payments and online work orders.

So the paving got done immediately because as we saw that, it looked like it was done because the pavement in our parking lot was patchwork.

It was done when the areas were bad and that was fixed and whatever.

He wanted a nice clean slate to take aerial pictures of the building, which he got.

So that was done.

Expansion of the space on the lower level, the basement.

He brought a group of us down to talk about that.

They had cleaned out everything that was in this big old storage basement, and he offered up that he would like to put it in a coffee shop, and in the basement.

And we're all looking at each other going, no, who would come?

Nobody from the street's going to come in to a coffee shop in the basement.

I think he was thinking that all of us artists would go there and spend 2 or $3 for a cup of coffee or more, but, we kind of Pooh poohed that.

And he did not like our response to his offer of really upgrading the space.

But, he was upset with us in conversation about that.

I offer you this, and you tell me that you don't want that.

In basic terms, there was more conversation going on.

And when you mentioned this, like you're talking about, it's not just you, it's this community or the community that there was a large group of us.

We got together and formed a tenants union, and had key people that we basically elected, to run what I'm thinking of now as interference with Peter.

and it I pushed everybody and.

Yeah.

And I did to take, you know, to put the younger folks that have a bigger stake in what their they were doing or are doing in the building, to basically to be the, the forefront that the face of the tenants in the building, and they did their, you know, I there were five key people that, stepped forward and started having conversations with Peter in meetings with Peter.

And, you know, he promises were handed out all the time.

And we weren't seeing results from that.

And then so how does that like, what toll does it take also to have this community and and folks but then to see people leave.

Right.

And most of the people left having to do with their interaction with management.

they put everybody on a month to month after their original, lease from the previous owner ran out.

So, you know, those that didn't sign up for several years, you know, we're we're told they were month to month and that they could be asked to leave.

So there was no stability for people to really, you know, stay and work.

So they were all hustling to find a place where they could go and feel secure in, their location they were moved to.

And a lot of that was it was hard for people because.

The Hungerford Building was low rent.

and when you're, you know, trying to sell your paintings or your other kinds of artwork, plus going to school or having a job, you know, it was hard to make ends meet, which really knew that place away from your living facility to, to do that kind of work and then to see the return on it when people ideally are coming to the Hungerford for First Friday and making sales and then if the people don't come, then you don't make it.

So on first Friday, most everybody that opened their doors made enough to pay their rent.

Very few said, oh no, nobody bought anything this time, you know, because the rents were so low, it didn't take much to pay them.

On what kind of art you're creating, right.

And that's not the case anymore.

Now, not even for me.

You know, with my big storefront, I'm not making well, between my partner and I, we are making enough to pay our rent on that first Friday.

But it's way low compared to what it was okay when it was and the numbers of people coming through, they see the parking lot.

Now that is virtually empty on a first Friday.

And, you know, it's like, oh, that it's a derelict building.

You know, it's kind of scary.

So and then so I'm curious like how much does that does that way into potential plans.

You may be thinking about in terms of the future now.

And I not to put you on the spot too much but like obviously these are these are economic concerns.

These are they are you know, so when I took mine, when I took over the, garage that was on the, you know, the pavement level, I made a deal with the previous owner that I would take it at the cost of a garage, and then I, put money into it because it was Covid.

I put money into it that I had saved in retirement to travel.

and I use that to create the shop with the store front end and do a few other things.

So I paid full out for the renovation of it because I didn't want it rolled into the rent where I knew I could handle the rent, whether I had a partner in the studio or not.

that was the key.

So it was an economic thinking ahead.

and putting it into, you know, crazy account, money to pay for my rent.

And I also live in the building and lofts.

there are ten lofts in the building and I moved in the year that they were built or built out from the, the building.

in 2006.

And I've lived there ever since.

And so I have twofold wanting, you know, wanting to stay because I don't really want to move, but also the cost of moving for both situations.

Sure.

Well, we have a comment.

Kelly from Rochester, as a former tenant, she just wanted to say this is heartbreaking and due to greed.

So thank you.

Appreciate that comment.

I wanted to read a little bit.

Oh, yeah.

Blue, please.

Oh, I was I was going to read something from Gino's piece, which is again, it's called the Community Loss.

It's it's in City magazine, in print as well as online.

and you mentioned this kind of what you were saying earlier, Gina, but, you know, you wrote during the time this story was being reported, for example, someone came into the building and attempted to break into several studios after successfully breaking into a room containing the keys to every studio.

At the time, there were no functioning locks on the building's exterior doors.

So when you were there, I mean, did you feel like how did you feel from a safety perspective?

so, there was almost like a comedic element to the room that had all the keys in it.

It was, padlocked shut, and you could push it and it would open up a crack.

And through that crack, you, if you look directly through it, you would see a wall of keys to every studio in the building.

And it's just like, this is like below even the lowest level of security.

You're basically it was like a puzzle in a video game of how to break into every building, in every room in the building.

so I mean, I again, like, I've been in some pretty bad buildings before and I would not want to stay there for a long period of time.

and I remember talking to one of the artists, Sienna Lindsey, who's, a younger woman who had a studio there that recently left, and she's for the past, the last year of her, her tenancy there, she was scared to go to her studio.

It was, one of the upper levels.

She'd go there at night and had to leave.

You don't know who's in the hallways.

Anyone can get in.

People were getting in.

so it was not it was not safe.

both from a health and safety standpoint as far as the actual environment of the building, but also, the security of it and as more tenants leave and it becomes more vacant, that just escalates, it becomes, worse and worse and worse and I think it'd be hard to pinpoint an exact point where this spiral started to happen.

But 2023, when, Hungerford had planned to do the renovations in the basement?

he was doing it without a permit.

He got stopped by the city.

he was given a stop work order and after that, you can see the following year, the code violations begin to rampantly tick up.

And that seems to be to me from the conversation I had with Peter before, the plans that he originally had did not work out, and that was the end result of it.

and yeah, so back to the original question.

Did I feel safe in there?

Not really.

But I would probably feel a lot less safe if I was the person who was a tenant there and had to spend prolonged periods of time there.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Oh, yeah.

this is so tragic.

And what you said it like, it's just struck me almost comedic.

because this is such a dramatic situation, probably some of the listeners are like, oh, my God, how did it get that bad, right?

No deny.

This is outrageous.

I also want to mention that, after a couple months of ownership, something that, Jen mentioned a little bit, but I want to circle back to that.

After a couple months of new ownership, many artists in this community were quite vocal on social media.

they had meetings internally, but they also reached out to folks like me, community leaders, art professionals in the community asking for help.

they reached out to local government.

they broadly posted, hey, this is going to be a gentrified building.

We're going to get kicked out, the sky is going to fall.

and I would say that largely what I saw, I'll say largely in many instances, they were not truly recognized for their concerns.

perhaps they were seen as being a bit dramatic, hyperbolic?

gentrification is inevitable.

They weren't talking about predicting, you know, feces on the floor.

They weren't predicting this weird dramatic degradation of the physical building, but they were predicting displacement.

And that's the bigger issue that I want to also talk about here.

it's really critical that as a, as a community, as an art community and definitely as, social, as, as a local government, we are thinking about our responsibility to a community like this and others.

Are we listening to them?

Are we respecting them as the experts in their own profession?

And I got to believe that if this were a building of lawyers or a building of doctors or a building of real estate agents, this would have played out differently.

so I just want to I just want to really, you know, flag that we have a lot of work to do to truly respect and appreciate not only what artists make, but understand them as the experts in their own field.

And this is a dramatic example.

But this situation has played out in many other cities.

There are many other examples of this five points in Queens.

There's this Viking building in Philadelphia.

You can read all about it.

It resembles the Hungerford.

So, so, similarly, we can look around at our other cities and we could have predicted what was going to happen here again, maybe not the exact leaks or the degradation of the building, but we absolutely could have predicted the exodus of artists and the displacement, frankly, the destruction of this cultural jam that had been so slowly built over time.

And, I, I want to be sure that this isn't some harbinger of more future chinks in, in our, in our local art community that has taken so long to build and to grow.

We're talking 100 word building here on connections with our guest, Jennifer Buckley of East Maine, Clay blue, six of the Rochester Contemporary Art center, and Gino Fanelli, WXXI news investigative reporter.

if you'd like to join the conversation here, number locally.

(585) 263-9994 connections at skywalk is the email address or we are on YouTube.

Feel free to leave us a comment there.

we do have, plans to speak with Peter Hungerford.

We will do that.

First, we have to take a very short break.

we will continue this conversation and we'll be joined by Peter Hungerford, owner of the building, after this short break here on Sky.

I'm Scott Lucas filling in for Evan Dawson.

Coming up in our next hour.

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Here on WXXI news, we're discussing the Hungerford Building and the local art scene here in Rochester with our guest Jennifer Buckley.

Blue Cease and Gino Fanelli.

we're also now joined on the phone by Peter Hungerford is the owner of the Hungerford Building, and managing partner and founder of the Realty Capital.

Peter, thanks so much for joining us.

Yeah.

Of course.

My pleasure.

we've been discussing, you know, the state of the building.

We've discussed how some artists have left, how that's been impacting the tenants.

I definitely want to open this up as a dialog kind of between all of us.

I'd like to maybe start with Peter.

When you purchased the building in 2022, you know, we talked a little bit.

We heard a little bit from Jennifer about her experiences there.

Can you just talk about what was your initial plan with the building?

sure.

Well, I'll say the same things to you that I said to Mr. Fanelli when, he and I first spoke.

Although it doesn't seem as though he listened very much, to it.

So hopefully he'll listen this time.

you know, I came into the building, with an expectation of investing several million dollars into the property, fixing a lot of the problems that were there creeping, I'll say mostly behind walls, but, not all of them truly behind the walls and, hoping and believing that, people, even in the arts community, would continue to, stay at the building and agree that, for a slightly better building, they would pay slightly more in rent and, and be willing to, you know, participate in keeping it a very vibrant place.

And I think what has transpired is that, you know, the, the, the there didn't seem to be any support for anything that resembled rent increases.

And then on the other side of the ledger, there, was really no, world in which the building didn't need many, many millions of dollars.

And so as those two things became more and more clear, it's, you know, sort of brought us to this place where I'm not sure what's going to happen next right now.

but the building needs millions and millions of dollars to keep it functioning.

respond civilly and, without raising rents to 12 or $15 a foot or something like this that, you know, the the arts community is just, sort of aghast at, I, I don't know what's going to happen next.

I don't want to put you on the spot, Jennifer, but I want to give you a chance to hear your response to that.

If there's anything that seems like you that comes to mind that we had a group we call the Tenants Union that, set with you, Peter, to talk about different things.

And I know that they and us behind them, would want, wanted to negotiate having a reasonable rent increase.

And also, the big thing for most everybody was offering that rent increase, with a lease that gave them security and having a space in the building, and we weren't against increasing the rent as long as it was a reasonable increase to what many of us were paying per square foot.

It's people at that time, and some of the actions of the your folks in the building caused many people to walk away because first of all, they weren't offered a lease and weren't able to negotiate the cost per square foot.

Or they just decided that, okay, I'm out of here, I'm going to find someplace else to go.

It's, you know, that first year people left quite quickly because of not getting answers to the questions and the security that they needed, and also the other things that weren't being taken care of.

I have top on my list of, I have a list of security and maintenance issues, and May 20th, in May 22nd, no security detail presence kept saying that they were getting security, no emergency, no numbers given out.

And we were told to call 911 if there was an issue.

There was no emergency number to call at the building.

Okay.

Jennifer, it's nice to chat with you again.

but I, I also, you know, before I came on here, listened to someone else, saying many things that I don't think were true.

And, so you're going to have to put up with, my turn here to combine some of that.

So, I agree with you.

There were some people that were willing to, live with some small rent increases, but as only one example of the issues with that statement, you know, the city of Rochester has increased our property tax bill by 300%, 300%.

They tripled our property tax bill.

Okay, that's not my fault.

That's not your fault.

That's just a fact of life.

And so what the building needs to be able to rent space for in order to pay its bills, is not solely something driven by the greed of a real estate developer or the landlord.

And some of these problems that I mentioned that were hiding behind the walls, I can also point to as being things that the seller of the property hid from us as the purchaser, and that went so far as to, you know, the security detail as well.

For months after the closing in 2022, the seller kept on telling us that they would work something out with their previous security company to maintain that security detail.

And anyone who ever told you to call 911 with a problem that's strictly related to, you know, criminal activity.

Jennifer, no one from our property management office would say, oh, don't call me.

If you have a problem, call 911.

No, that's with respect to criminal activity.

I'm not the police.

We're not the police.

We don't control the police.

If there's a crime happening, you should call 911.

That's what I would personally tell you.

I'm sure that's what my office would tell you.

So please don't suggest that you were not given emergency phone numbers, because that's simply not true.

No more than it's true that there's feces all around the building or that there's a homeless in camp.

Peter, I saw it with my own eyes.

We have photographs of it.

You can't say that.

That's not true.

It's a large building, and I can't be responsible.

It's not.

It's a large building that has all the foot of the building at all times.

If that happened, it happened.

Then you saw it, then it was cleaned up very shortly.

There.

There are eight toilets on the second floor of the building.

And at the time we were there, six of them were actively filled with human feces.

One was so broken it couldn't be used anymore.

And one, by some grace of God, was clean.

So you can't just tell me this is something I'm spotting and telling me that I'm being dishonest about what I saw with my own two eyes.

And I also want to touch on something established.

You are not very objective about this discussion.

Okay, if we want to.

Well, because you have been insulting my reporting and calling me dishonest since you've come on the call.

So I'm going to defend that.

And I also want to make a note on you encampment.

That's that's a there's there's a homeless encampment there.

Yes, there are our.

Peter, you can go there and look at it yourself.

Okay, I have and I've never seen a single homeless encampment.

It is true that there is a homeless man who has been craftily finding his way into the building over and over again.

But if you are actually paying attention to our action, and as the owner of the building, you would know that we have gone out of our way to change locks, change security, make changes to avoid that.

If I understanding with that with after we started reporting on it to false and I want to make a note to and the tripling of your property tax bill.

The building was assessed at $1.4 million at the time.

You bought it for 7.7, which raised the property tax from 1.4 to 6.7 million in assessed value.

That is a result of a sale going for more.

So when you say the city raised our property taxes, yeah, that's because you paid a lot more for it than it was originally assessed at.

And it does beg the question.

I'm not mad at the city.

It just is a fact of life that when the expenses to operate a building increase that drives up rents, that's not a developer being greedy and trying to make more profit.

I never called you greedy.

Fact of life.

There's a question I think that's really pressing.

That is just what what can be done now.

I mean, we're talking about it in blue.

Feel free to.

Yeah, I guess I'm I guess I have another question.

and I wonder, why this developer decided to invest in the art community?

It sounds like there's so much antagonism here toward the art community.

Art communities are unique industries, and they see our community at all.

Zero.

I've met with Miss Buckley and all of her friends many, many, many times.

I have zero animosity towards her in any way, shape or form.

What the.

I think a pressing question then is what?

What can be done about these conditions?

We're talking about studios.

We're talking about potential safety concerns.

I mean, is there a an immediate plan on your end, Peter, just to kind of start to address this stuff.

Address what exactly number of conditions that seem to be contributing to people potentially relocating or or whatever else might be happening there based on Gino's reporting?

well, I'm still not sure exactly what your question is, but I'll try anyways.

so we don't have a plan yet for the building because as I've tried to describe the cost to, function the building, completely, operate the building completely, exceed the rents that, the artist community is, is willing or able to pay.

And so we've looked at other users of the building and are considering other users of the building as a possible alternative.

the, suggestion that the, the violations are out of control.

I also heard that one from before I started, is also simply not true.

There's 21 code violations on the building for 225,000 square foot building of 21 code violations for a period of two years is nothing.

there was a moment in time where the city believed we were doing work without a permit.

We, rectified that issue by establishing with the city that the work we were doing didn't require a permit.

And, so that is also a falsehood that we were somehow skirting rules or laws or regulations, and I don't know exactly what's going to happen with the building next, but never have I ever kicked anyone out of the building or told them they had to leave.

We went from the occupancy we were at closing to today without us kicking out a single person unless they didn't pay their rent.

If they didn't pay their rent, we were forced to evict a small number of people.

But there is not one example you could give me of someone that we've kicked out of the building, because that's never been our intention, never was our intention.

Jennifer has your how much is your rent raised since we took over?

Not by much.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Even Jennifer and I can agree on something, so I. I have no animosity or antagonistic approach to the arts community.

I hoped very sincerely and genuinely to work hand in hand with them from the outset.

Unfortunately, it appears that there's not going to be a kumbaya, happy moment here in the near future.

But, I'm far from letting go of the dream that the Hungerford building can remain a viable cultural object of everyone's affection, and I don't have all the answers, but it is because I don't have all the answers that I wake up every morning and still bang my head against the wall, trying to figure out a solution.

Here.

Is there anything you want to add?

You know, I saw your wheels turning.

I think the main question for me is, yeah, I mean, if there is no plan right now, I mean, is there any consideration of selling it, is there any option here that you are considering?

If you're thinking about it that much, I would like to give you a chance to say, what are some of the thoughts that you're having here?

Besides that, we just don't have a plan right now.

What do you think it could look like?

How do you preserve that?

that would be my question here.

So, you know, just like in our conversation that we had, I'm open to selling the property.

If someone has an idea on what that looks like, I'm all ears.

you know, the the problem that I faced of escalating costs and operating the property is a problem, that has, another negative side of it, which is the effect it's had on the people that used to occupy the building.

And, you know, when I took over this building there, like the fire safety issues that existed in this property were reprehensible and absolutely nothing short of irresponsible.

We've rectified those problems.

I, I don't like the, state of the building today, but I know of one homeless person who has found his way in and out on multiple occasions, but I don't think he's there now, and I there are absolutely no homeless encampments at the property.

What happens next?

I don't know, but I'm all ears to anyone who has productive solutions.

There might be a value here maybe throwing to you, Jennifer, about what would you like to see happen next?

Well, if I had several million dollars, I, you know, go through, methodically and work on areas of the building, to bring it to what you could probably or a owner could probably charge for 14 plus dollars per square foot.

It there is so much needed to be done.

And I agree that, you know, when you took it over, there would have been money needed to be invested in order to bring things up.

but we also had, you know, some things that are no longer there.

The security, and just maintenance of the building.

Right now, the parking lot has not been salted, and it's an ice rink.

and it's, you know, due to the weather, of course, but, the maintenance issues continue on.

That's one that is right now top of my mind, because I could fall in that parking lot because of its condition.

so, Jennifer, here again, I'm.

I'm surprised we actually find ourselves agreeing if I could fill the building with people paying $14 a foot in rent, that would be plenty to cover all the operating costs and then some, and would would make my day right.

But but, amenities, some of the things that need to be done to the building would have to be done and shown that things are being taken care of before anybody would be willing to, including myself, pay $14 a square plus, it's that's the situation that there was nothing showing us that things were being upgraded or taken care of, even from your initial list that you gave us.

sent us a letter to the whole.

You're telling me that if I, if I had given you a rent increase to $14 a foot two years ago, you would have said, great, Peter, please take care of the building.

I will happily pay $14 for it.

No.

Show me that you're taking care of the building.

That's what it is.

I wasn't going to pay $14 for something that there's no evidence of upgrading.

So you would like me to invest $5 million in the building, and you promise me you're going to be willing to pay $14 a foot when I'm done?

Yeah, that would be worth it if you do the upgrades that.

Oh, I don't think that's a conversation we would have had two years ago, but, if I'm glad we're having that kind of well, possibly you and I separate from other folks in the building might have had that conversation.

You know, show me that you can do this and then offer me a lease and an increase in my rent.

I would appreciate the cynicism.

And and, you know, it's, appropriate.

We have a quick comment.

I just wanted to get justice from Kelly Cheadle and artist and former tenant.

She says, the owner doesn't have the capacity to take responsibility for this building, either for its condition or for his actions and inactions that led to the destruction of both the structure and the community within it.

His choices forced tenants out, and now our entire community is suffering the consequences.

This is how gentrification happens.

This is to your earlier point, blue.

artists and small businesses build this space up only to be pushed out when it becomes valuable to investors.

That seems to be representative of at least a portion of some of the tenor of the conversations happening here.

And I think this might this might, you know, correspond to something that you were going to say about the sort of the larger conversation we were having.

Blue.

Yeah.

I mean, again, I think that, it's hard for me to understand, the, the investment in a community and a building that has such a unique identity without truly understanding that community, its needs, its willingness to pay ten or 12 or 14 a square foot, those are details, but those are the dollars and cents that are kind of being blamed for this situation.

so again, I just think that, we, we, we as a community, we want to support the arts.

We value the arts.

It is a unique sector.

And that and that building was an important hub for that.

And I, can only assume that that was a critical reason why it was invested in for such a high amount, because it seemed like there was a good upside.

Well, apparently the upside isn't quite there.

But the downside was there.

The artists were there because the rent was affordable and now they're gone because, they really didn't seem to be a solid understanding of what makes an art community.

What what holds those artists to a big brick box?

and and make it this beloved space which, it seems like it's going to take a lot more than just dollars to rebuild.

We're getting really close to the end here.

Is there sort of final thoughts?

Jennifer, I know you well.

I have a question.

what were the fire issues as I never thought there was anything going on.

The, the fire safety system ties into the electrical grid for the building and the elevators, and so you can think about it as kind of, a big quilt over the building.

that's all communicating with each other.

and, there's a couple of different brains and computers that monitor those sensors.

and when we took over, that system, was just shockingly out of date and, and required a very meaningful investment, early on that, you know, was not previously represented or known about.

I just want to, say also before we quickly wrap up that we had a lot of comments and a lot of calls and a really great participation from folks listening, and we didn't get to all of those.

But I really appreciate that.

I think this is a really important to the larger, healthy ecosystem of the art scene.

As we've been discussing.

So Peter Hungerford over the phone, thank you so much for being here.

You know, finally, Sky investigations report to thank you.

Blue Seas executive director and curator of Rochester.

Rocco, I was just going to say, Rocco, to save time.

Thank you for being here.

And Jennifer Buckley, Vice Mayor Clay, thank you so much for being here on connections, for having us.

And thank you, Peter, for joining in.

We appreciate that another hour of connections follows just now, so stay tuned.

Thank you.

Oh.

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