Project 14C to House Over 150 Artists in Powerhouse District

The Powerhouse Arts District wasn’t just meant to be a place for artists to show and sell their works. It was also meant to be a neighborhood where artists could live. High rents in the District and lax enforcement of the PAD Ordinance has put that dream out of reach for most regional creators. Even as galleries and performance spaces have opened in the Warehouse District, we’ve been slow to rebuild the community of interconnected artists that we lost when 111 First Street was evacuated and demolished. 

Art 14C is trying to change that. Through Project 14C, a residency program, the organization behind the Garden State’s biggest art fair intends to fill three floors of the former warehouse at 150 Bay Street with artists in all disciplines. If all goes as 14C Director Robinson Holloway intends it to, it’ll mean at least 150 new creative people in the neighborhood. 150 Bay Street is already the conceptual center of the district: its second floor is a warren of arts studios and galleries, including the newly rechristened Gallery 14C, the largest exhibition space in the PAD. 

Those who move into Project 14C won’t be there indefinitely. Residencies will last for a year or two; after that, 14C will turn the room over to another applicant. It’s all in an effort to introduce new artists to Jersey City and provide the scene a much-needed infusion of youth and novelty. But will the residents invest in the community and the neighborhood, or will their aspirations take them to the other side of the Hudson? Holloway is aware of the challenges, but she’s convinced that this is a transformative project — one that can help realize the long-deferred vision of the PAD’s designers. 

We caught up with Robinson Holloway and talked about the program, the neighborhood, the building, and the difficult art of convincing newcomers to make an emotional investment in Jersey City.

Tris McCall/Jersey City Times: Art 14C is best known for your annual Art Fair. What prompted you to redirect your creative energies toward a residency program?

Robinson Holloway: I knew that three floors of 150 Bay Street had been recently renovated to create dormitory space for the athletes of Nyack College, which, in January 2023, rebranded to Alliance University. When Alliance last summer announced that it was declaring bankruptcy and shutting down, my immediate thought was to approach building owner Jeffrey Gural and suggest that the empty dorm spaces be filled with artists. 

His first answer was no. The plan was to find another college to fill the dorm rooms. That didn’t work out, and Gural had his architects draw up plans to convert the dorms to rentable apartments, similar to those on the upper floors of the building. But before acting on those plans, in December he reached out to me to ask about my idea for artists. I had a detailed proposal and timeline for him the next day. 

He liked the idea of the artist residency program, and has been exceptionally generous ever since in supporting it.

TMC/JCT: So this was something you’d been thinking about for a long time?

RH: The way this came together feels like a combination of serendipity and fate — the culmination of a lot of the ideas and experiences that I have had since I started my first foray into arts administration at the Jersey City Arts Council seven and a half years ago. Back then I would think of so many different ways to address the challenges and help advance the diverse arts practices in this city, and one thought I kept coming back to was to somehow get 100 apartments just for artists. We’d invite young emerging artists to live in the apartments for a year for free, creating art, exploring the area, joining the community.  Whether they stayed here afterward or left, they started their careers in Jersey City.

No one offered 100 apartments at the time, or even one apartment. But the idea of what such a program could achieve never left me.

TMC/JCT: This seems like an enormous undertaking, and it comes right on the heels of the Art Week and the most recent Art Fair.  How did you find the time?  Were you able to do this because Art Fair 14C is on hiatus until 2025? 

RH: I’m not afraid of taking on big projects, particularly when they have so much potential to make an impact.

I’d planned to take the first six months of 2024 as a sabbatical from 14C. Though creating the framework and logistics for Project 14C has destroyed all hopes for time off, I am grateful that I’ve carved out the time, because this is too rare an opportunity to pass up. 

Too often, when artists are given space, it’s because it’s otherwise uninhabitable. But this is a beautiful facility with twelve foot ceilings, lots of natural light, and about 125,000 feet of finished space. Each of the 72 artist live/work spaces is furnished and has two bathrooms and a kitchenette. The nine RA apartments have a full kitchen. 

It’s been a lot of hard work, but it’s a great to be able to create a new arts community, within an arts building, in an arts district, in downtown Jersey City, on the doorstep of New York City.

TMC/JCT: How much labor did it take to turn a college dormitory into rooms useful to working artists? Did it need a substantial overhaul?

RH: Most of the work involves space planning with the various quirky layouts, and then moving furniture around. Alliance University left behind 432 beds, 432 desks, 432 chests of drawers, 432 armoires, hundreds of dining tables, armchairs, ottomans — all either completely new or barely used. We got a lot of valuable help in space planning from the architecture students at High Tech High School in Secaucus, and assistance in furniture moving from students at St. Peters University and St. Peters Prep.

We’re leaving the dining hall and the large gym filled with very expensive machines just as they are. But we’re moving the AstroTurf from the former practice area to help soundproof our recording studio, replacing the giant ice bath from the former training room with utility sinks and creating an art classroom, moving the ping pong table from the lounge to the maker space, turning one study room into a green screen room and another into a therapy office. Other than that, the facility is pretty much ready to go.

TMC: How many artists will be part of the residency? How much will they be paying, and how much is subsidized?

RH: We’re anticipating between 150 to 180 artists for the one-year residency program. The live/work spaces are quite large — ranging from 877 to 1500 square feet – and most will house two or three artists living together.

Though each space was designed to house six student athletes, we will cap at a maximum of four artists. We feel that communal living is an important part of the experience, and so any artist requesting to live alone will pay the maximum fee of $48,000 for the year, which is $4000 per month. That fee does not fully cover the cost of the residency.

TMC: Will you be raising money to offset the costs for participating artists?

RH: The cost of the residency will be different for each artist based on the amount of space required by their practice as well as their financial need.

Even though this program has been in existence for just over 4 months, and we’ve barely started fundraising or grant writing, we do have generous support from Jeff Gural so that we can offer full and partial fellowships to a number of artists who could not otherwise afford to participate. 

The goal is to raise more funding so that the majority of artists will have their residency covered. We’re starting with a Hudson Gives campaign this month to get some much needed operational funding and more scholarship funding. (Side note: I am co-chair of Hudson Gives along with Christine Perez of York Street Project. Please support one or more of the more than 100 phenomenal nonprofits that do so much good in Hudson County at www.hudsongives.org!)

TMC: How might local artists apply for this live/work housing?

RH: Local artists can apply just as any other artist would. We would expect that they live as well as work in the space. This is not a studio practice or a residency of isolation where the object is to write a novel, make a film or create a certain number of paintings in the space of a year. Our focus is on creating the foundation for a career in the arts, and that means participating in the professional development programming, joining the workshops, learning from the mentors we bring in, making connections, and taking advantage of opportunities in the arts communities within the building, within Jersey City and within New York City.

TMC: How are you getting the word out about Project 14C?

RH: It started with one email in January and a few Instagram posts. We could see as the link to the pre-application questionnaire started spreading quickly beyond the JC/NYC area to other states and other countries. We haven’t done much promotion beyond that yet, but an outreach and promotion campaign will be launching this month when the application opens.

TMC: How do you establish artist qualifications for something like this? 

RH: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about qualifications, and am lucky to have many knowledgeable people in the arts, and with artist residency experience in particular, who I can turn to for advice. We’re looking for applicants to show talent, of course, but also a dedication to their practice and the drive to be full time artists. This is not to say that we are looking only for the most commercially viable artists — not at all.

After the applications have been scored by experts in the various fields, we will then address financial need and the ability to pay any part of the residency fees.

Helping create strong foundation for a career in the arts was always a top priority for this residency. Our residents are artists, but they are also entrepreneurs and small businesses, and there are skills and knowledge required in the real world that may not have been part of their prior education. 

We haven’t set an age limit. Our only requirement is that the artist is age 21 or older, but because of the communal living, and because our focus is on the work to establish a career, we believe that the majority of the resident artists will be in their 20s and 30s and in the early stages of their careers.

TMC: Do you anticipate that there’ll be many Jersey City or Hudson County (or Garden State) people participating in the Residency?

RH: I am sure that there will be. We’ve already seen a huge amount of interest from artists in Jersey City and New Jersey.

TMC: Is there a projected opening date? Are you planning a grand kickoff event in 14C style?

RH: Our various special program facilities will start to come together over the summer. The staff, including RAs, will move into the offices and apartments then, so that we are ready when the first group of resident artists arrives the first week of September. Because of the timing, it’s likely that JCAST will serve as a kick-off and introduction to the community.

TMC: How do we convince the Project 14C residents to be part of our scene? Some of them, no doubt, will be oriented to the other side of the Hudson, but they’ll be living right in the middle of the Powerhouse Arts District. Are there any plans in the works to orient newcomers and introduce them to Jersey City and what we’ve got going on here?

RH: Although it’s impossible to dictate the behavior of 150 to 180 artists, it is our intent to have the artists from Project 14C become part of the Jersey City community while they are here. They will already be in the 150 Bay Street building, which is filled with artists and creative people, and the residency floors will regularly be open to the public during Art Crawls and JCAST. We have started building partnerships for the residency with other arts organizations and institutions, and that will further help integrate the resident artists to the wider community.

We are also asking each resident artist for 18 hours of volunteer time over the 12 months of the residency. That time can be spent within our building, or out in the community.

After their residency is complete, whether they stay in the area or whether they go elsewhere, they started their careers in Jersey City — and that’s of benefit to all of us.