While this proposal is very admirable, I doubt it’s very practical. It’s the same for the WTC area. Once new buildings are raised on his land, it’s value will skyrocket, it’s tax bills will be enormous. The idea that there’s going to be some new shiny spaces there that local artists can afford is pie-in-the-sky. Those days are long over for this neighborhood.
Great art grows in the cracks and crevices of society, like weeds; not in it’s guilded halls. Unfortunately, and thanks to Bloomberg, there are very few of these moldy, shadowed buildings for such great art to incubate. Warhol certainly didn’t create his great art in such a place. He did it in a vacant warehouse.