Future-proofing a beloved affordable community for NYC artists

Amid the extreme wealth of the 21st century West Village in NYC lies a gem: Westbeth Artists Housing, a sprawling complex fitted out of an old Bell Labs site that, in 1970, became a highly subsidized nonprofit live/work-space for NYC artists and their families. The waitlist to live in the Westbeth, which has attained iconic status in the neighborhood, is so long that it is usually closed to newcomers – no surprise given that most of the people living in the 384 apartments don't leave until death. The complex also houses an array of studio spaces and class, performance and office space for other entities.

New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Peter Madden, 50, Westbeth executive director since last year, about the unique skill set required to run a cherished multipart live/work complex, the challenges of maintaining and adding to a very old site (parts of which date back to 1860) and what he loves most about coming to work.

Peter, thanks so much for speaking to us today. So if we met at a party and you told me you ran Westbeth and I said "What's that?", what would you tell me?

It's a housing complex in the West Village that takes up a full city block (bounded by West and Bethune Streets, hence the name, as well as Washington and Bank Streets). It's 384 units of affordable housing for artists that range from studios to three-bedrooms, but we also have about 100,000 square of so-called commercial space, but right now that includes about 35 or 40 artist studios. We were heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, before which we had even more studio space in our basement, which is vast. 

But currently, our other commercial space ranges from some office-type uses to a full building we rent to the New School's Graduate Drama Program. There’s also a dance studio that the Martha Graham Company currently rents from us but that for 35 years hosted Merce Cunningham's company. We also have space dedicated to our tenants, like the Westbeth Gallery, which is run on a volunteer basis by the Westbeth Artist Residents Council.

The buildings had a fascinating life well before Westbeth. They were built between 1860 and 1930 and previously the entire block was owned by Bell Labs and was the site of really amazing technological innovations like the first TV broadcast in 1927.

So how did the complex become Westbeth?

Bell Labs moved to New Jersey in the mid-Sixties, so a family foundation, The J.M. Kaplan Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts jointly put in money to acquire the site. I don't know how much they paid for it. This was around 1967 or 1968. Even then, they recognized that NYC needed affordable apartments for artists. Then they got federal financing to convert the building into apartments and other spaces, which was one of the first projects of Richard Meier. The oldest building, from 1860, is all art studios occupied by the tenants. We also have (the performance space) The Kitchen in the complex temporarily as they renovate their facility in Chelsea, and a few years ago, we rented a ground floor space to Greenwich House, where a senior center serves lunch five days a week.

I think probably 40% of the current tenants are people who moved in in the 1970s. We've tried to adapt to that over the years, such as now we have that senior center on site and also a full-time social worker who helps tenants with their benefits (like Social Security and Medicare), end-of-life issues, estate planning – because a lot of these artists may not have a lot of cash but their artwork has value. Some of the longtime artists who live here include painter Hans Haacke, conceptual artist Lorraine O'Grady, who had a show at the Brooklyn Museum, and performing artists including David Greenspan, singer and composer Theo Bleckman and jazz guitarist Peter Bernstein.

What are the rents?

They span from $900 for a studio to $1400 for a three-bedroom. We're a rent-stabilized building, in addition to being subject to a regulatory agreement with NYC that further restricts our rents. Our waitlist is closed. The wait for studios and one-bedroom is more than 15 years. The larger units turn over a bit faster, but you have to meet the income limit and the family size. So to live in a two-bedroom you'd need an adult and a child, and in a three-bedroom you'd need an adult and two children. It's very rare that people leave. The waitlist briefly opened up about 2017, and we got a massive response, like 20,000 people, and then we randomly draw people when a place opens up and do an eligibility screen.

So tell us about the different components of your job.

I've started here at a really interesting time when there's a lot of pretty significant repair and maintenance needs. During Sandy, our entire basement was filled to the ceiling with water, which led to a very significant investment of federal disaster recovery funds. We spent $40 million on work that mostly happened below street level. We raised our five boilers, put in a generator and had to waterproof all the critical mechanical equipment that wasn't feasible to move. We have a very distinctive courtyard where it turned out that all of the steel supporting it had corroded.

So we did all this valuable work, but in the meantime, there was this whole list of other capital projects. Fortunately, since we are affordable housing, there are all these specific funding sources to help us. We're also on the National Register of Historic Places, so we're eligible for special tax credits. We're piecing together financing for a construction scope of $70 million. So we're going to replace roofs that are leaking, including the segment of the old West Side elevated freight rail that runs through the property, which is sitting up there now with the original track bed which has leaks into vacant apartments below it.

And you oversee a staff.

Quite a large staff, including the building services staff, which is front desk, security, four fulltime handymen. A lot of these folks have worked here for decades and really care about the place and the people. We have an administrative staff of seven of us who deal with leasing and affordable-housing compliance work and making sure repairs are happening. 

A big focus of mine has been thinking about how we're going to get good new tenants for our different commercial spaces. We just did a really cool event at the end of June called “The Art Takeover,” where we took three vacant commercial spaces and converted them into art galleries for a month. What I really appreciate about my job is that I get to be involved in the cultural aspects. Such as we have a good relationship with the folks at Little Island (in Hudson River Park) and they have a small venue called The Glade where they offered us the chance to have a Westbeth showcase. So I worked with the head of our (Westbeth Artists Residence Council) in putting that together. 

Also, we have this cavernous double-height space in our basement that a New School professor who develops theater in nontraditional spaces fell in love with. So we had a weekend of performances in there that she developed with her class.

What's your professional bio?

I started as a teacher, then went to an education nonprofit. Then 9/11 happened, and my nonprofit was affiliated with the Partnership for NYC (then called the NYC Partnership) and we got involved with helping businesses in the World Trade Center area get back on their feet. I then became one of the earliest employees at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which was an up-close lesson in good and bad public policy. Then in 2005, I went to the NYU Wagner School for Public Service and got my master's in public administration. Through my time there, I figured out that affordable housing was an interesting, impactful area. My first job after Wagner was working for the city Housing, Preservation and Development agency. Sandy happened when I was there and I became director of storm recovery programs and got involved in this multi-agency process called “Build it Back.” A lot of what I did at HPD was financing preservation projects, so I got to know that thorny world of all the rules of spending federal money on construction in NYC.

Later, for five years, I ended up being the executive director of the Joint Ownership Entity NYC program, which is a collaboration of 11 different community development corporations who work across the city. It's an experiment to see if they can amass more financial strength by jointly owning property, because the more property you own, the more leverage you have in negotiating with agencies like HPD. And that's where I learned what it meant to run a nonprofit and work with a board. We managed to close on financing on a very complicated affordable housing renovation project that involved four different (Joint Ownership Equity) members who agreed to transfer ownership of their properties to this umbrella.

And how did you end up at Westbeth?

I'd left (Joint Ownership Equity) and was doing consulting, but someone told me about the opening at Westbeth and I applied and got the job. I didn't know anyone there, but I had that familiarity with Westbeth that a lot of longtime New Yorkers do. I saw Yo La Tengo play there in 1999.

What skills did you have coming into Westbeth that made you right for the job?

I think I understood that there would be a lot of different constituencies – a board of 10 people, a unionized staff building, an office staff and 394 apartments inhabited by about 600 people. Having worked for the city for a long time, then the (Joint Ownership Equity) experience, I wasn't intimidated at the idea of managing these varied constituencies. As a personality type, I can roll with some – I don't wanna say chaos, but varied and sometimes conflicting constituencies.

I've also learned that any task you embark on is going to develop in an iterative way, meaning that you're going to discover problems that need to be worked out as you go and that you should never freak out. There's always going to be curveballs, and it's not anybody's fault; it's just a reality, especially when you're dealing with real estate and construction in NYC. There are unknowns, like when interest rates change or when you tear open a wall and find mold. You can't let the unexpected throw you off. And you also can't react emotionally even when other people are.

What's a typical day like?

I live in Downtown Brooklyn. I get up at eight and I'm out the door by 8:30. I hop on the 2 train and I'm at Westbeth with iced coffee in hand by 9:15 or 9:30.

You never work from home?

Pretty much never. On Wednesdays at 10 a.m., we do a call with all the architects and engineers who are working on our renovation project. We go through all the hot-button issues. Then, this week, after that call, I had another call with lawyers about a significant commercial lease that we are negotiating.

Then I like to spend as much time as possible walking around the building and getting to know where we need to do work and what the issues are. Like this morning, I was with a structural engineer, an architect, a general contractor and our super. We were going around to the various roofs. Two things we're looking at are putting on green roof systems and solar panels, so we need to poke holes in the roof to make sure that they can carry the weight of what we want to put on them.

What is a green roof system?

You lay down soil on the roofs and plant a drought-resistant succulent that provides a layer of insulation and extends the life of the roof. The city loves it because, during a storm, it slows down the rate at which stormwater is released into the city sewers. It's not for people to go up to the roof and sit on, although the migratory birds can sit on it.

That sounds really cool. What's the rest of the day like?

A lot of the staff come in and leave early, so the end of the day is quieter and I sit beside my colleague Miriam, our lead project manager, and respond to emails and calls. I'll frequently check in with my board chair. Then I usually leave here by 6:30, go back to Brooklyn, go to the gym and get dinner. I'd like to make my own dinner more frequently than I actually do. Then I read. I also DJ as a hobby – I'm always fiddling with house and disco music. Then I go to bed around midnight.

What's a very specific skill or hack you've learned over your career?

Don't always respond to emails right away. I'm in a position where I'm asked to make a lot of decisions, and I've learned it's okay to wait a day or three to give someone an answer. Your thinking may well evolve overnight. I'm not afraid to say, “I don't know – let's discuss next week.” And I think people respond well to that.

What's a personal trait you've had to work on professionally?

I think I've improved in not feeling the need to have my fingerprints on every single little thing. It's not necessary or sustainable. For example, periodically we'll send an email to residents on a specific topic. I've learned that Miriam writes good emails and that I don't need to edit every single word.

I also think that, having a large staff, I still need to figure out better how to more systematically check in with folks and see how they're doing.

What are you proudest of since you came to Westbeth a year ago?

It's a priority for me to have constructive working relationships with my board and with (the Westbeth Artists Residents Council) to make sure they feel included, valued and responded to. And I feel I have pretty clear pathways to success on the big construction priority areas here.

What are your Westbeth goals for the next, say, three to five years?

We have some amazing opportunities right now. Figuring out how to get tenants into our vacant commercial space who give us much needed revenue while also contributing to the life on this campus feels really exciting. Also, as part of this construction project, we're going to replace the trackbed of the elevated freight rail, which was part of what is now the High Line. Then we'll do something with this remarkable, unique NYC space (that) is half outdoors and half underneath one of our buildings.

What do you think you'll do with it?

Such a good question. I don't know yet. Right now, it's hard to access from the street and even from within the building. 

What's something you love most when you come to work?

It's honestly the people who inhabit this place. Such as poet Edward Field, a gentleman here since the late 1970s who just celebrated his 100th birthday. Every day, even during a heatwave, he takes his grocery cart, which he uses as a kind of walker, and walks a mile. His longtime partner, Neil Derrick, passed away in 2018. His 100th birthday was in our community, and it was great to see him thriving at 100, supported by his longtime neighbors and friends.