In 2008, a group of friends and I took on a former brine shrimp factory with an unlikely idea: we wanted to turn an industrial property into a place where local artists could make a living, find an audience, and become a more visible part of the life of the city.

The scale of the property made the possibility feel enormous. It included a front office, an industrial kitchen, a 3,500-square-foot warehouse, a 10,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse, and a 30,000-square-foot warehouse building. We weren’t starting with a polished arts venue. We were starting with raw space and a shared conviction that it could become something the creative community needed.

Together, we redeveloped the complex into the City of Seven Gates Artists’ Collective Space. It grew to include an art gallery, small meeting and conference rooms, an industrial kitchen, preparation and storage space for farmers-market producers, an event venue, general storage, and dozens of working artists’ studios. I had my own clothing-design studio there, and I was also deeply involved in making the larger collective work.

As a founding member, I helped shape our strategy and managed daily operations throughout the redevelopment. I oversaw the artist studios and the events taking place in the building, and I served as our liaison with the city for public-private partnership events. On any given day, the work could move between the practical demands of running a large, evolving facility and the larger challenge of building relationships around what we hoped the space could become.

The building came alive through the people who used it. We hosted events large and small, including fashion shows, acrobatics practice, and a public winter festival that brought more than 2,000 visitors through our doors. Artists in the studios offered classes and organized their own public programs. Those moments mattered because they made the collective more than a place where people worked behind closed doors. They made it a gathering place where the community could meet its local artists and take part in what they were creating.

Our connection with the city helped extend that work beyond the walls of the building. We brought an arts-and-entertainment presence to municipal events such as Pride and First Night celebrations. We wanted more local artists and performers to be hired for city programs, and we wanted public art and artist participation to feel like a normal part of community development rather than an afterthought.

We were also thinking about the local economy. We wanted artists to have a real platform from which to build businesses supported by their community. We hoped local companies would feature locally made products. Through the industrial kitchen and preparation space, we also wanted to give farmers and food creators a lower-cost way to prepare goods for local businesses and farmers markets.

What we were building was not just a venue or a collection of studios. It was shared infrastructure: space, equipment, visibility, relationships, and opportunities that individual creators often struggle to secure on their own. By bringing those resources together, we hoped to make it easier for creative people to participate in the civic and economic life around them.

Looking back, City of Seven Gates was an early expression of an idea that would follow me through much of my civic-innovation work. People often already have the talent, knowledge, and desire to contribute. What they need is a place to begin, a way in, and a structure that helps their work connect with a larger community. My role was to help build and operate that structure.

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