CONDOMINIUM WITH ARTIST RESIDENCY

SUGAR HILL STUDIO PROGRAM
Brooklyn and Harlem, New York
2013–c.2021

Sugar Hill Capital Partners

Piggybacking Tactics Employed:
Inhabit a Niche

Residual Spaces can be found within sites that are otherwise occupied, sometimes in the basements and former mechanical spaces of older buildings. Sugar Hill Capital Partners (SHCP), for example, once provided studio space to local artists in its renovated basement spaces in Harlem and Brooklyn either “for trade” or at subsidized rates. THE SUGAR HILL STUDIO PROGRAM combined its founder’s passion for art with his company’s aim to recapture underutilized spaces in the apartment buildings they owned and operated. Artists living within a 30-block radius of one of SHCP’s properties were eligible to apply for a one-year lease on available studios. At the end of their residency, Sugar Hill collected a “substantial artwork” as payment for use of the space.

A cynical assessment of this program might view this arrangement as mildly exploitative—basements, after all, do not generally constitute ideal studio space. But as one participant put it, “artists in New York City are of course grateful for any space they can get.” She further noted what she viewed as SHCP’s generally “good intentions” and the unprecedented nature of the studio program’s efforts to connect emerging artists with local studio space and private collectors. Nonetheless, when viewed in relation to SHCP’s practice of acquiring, upgrading, and in some cases deregulating previously rent-stabilized buildings, troubling questions about gentrification and displacement can also be posed. SHCP quietly ended its artist residency program sometime in the early 2020s—a casualty, perhaps, of the pandemic or of SHCP’s recent financial challenges.