Seattle's artists mourn art pioneer
--------------------------------------- Plaque planned
Seattle artists are arranging to place a plaque in Boston's Laconia Lofts project. It will contain a tribute to Jack McLaughlin's work for them in this city. For more information, contact the Gateway Main Street Program at Citizens Bank, 1355 Washington St., Boston, MA 02118. ----------------------------------
In Seattle, as in most rapidly growing cities, "developer" is a term artists rarely use in polite company. But local artists are mourning the sudden death of Boston's John M. McLaughlin. When he failed to attend a scheduled planning meeting, police were called to the 50-year-old developer's Cambridge, Mass., residence. An autopsy revealed that McLaughlin, a heavy smoker, died during the night of a sudden heart attack.
McLaughlin, always known as "Jack," did not personally invent the term "artists' housing." But he dedicated his life to making it an actuality. Twelve years ago, he agreed to help 100 artists who were struggling to create live/work space in a derelict factory. It took him three years, during a stock-market crisis. But his final creation, Boston's Brickbottom Building, remains the genre's international model.
It was the reason he eventually met Seattle artists, and became a champion in some of their battles. When the artists' housing at 66 Bell St. was slated for redevelopment, it was McLaughlin - not a local advocate - who came to its aid. For nine months, he worked with the residents, their lawyer and backers, to structure a market-rate offer for the building.
The owners declined to sell and the artists were evicted. But McLaughlin stayed in touch with his Seattle friends. He asked about their projects and flew out to attend their openings. Several works that artists gave him still remain in studios here - waiting for collection on his next trip to Seattle.
And McLaughlin planned an artists' live/work project here. It would have happened, says his friend David Anderson, the Houston-based president of the national Theater Management Group. For TMG, McLaughlin was restoring Boston's historic Opera House. "Jack was a genuine, extremely honest visionary. The hype made him out as a real fast-talker. But everything he ever told me he was going to do got done."
Among McLaughlin's most notable accomplishments was a re-structuring of Boston's zoning codes. In 11 of that city's neighborhoods, thanks to those labors, it is now legal for artists to live in their studio spaces. Bruce Rossley, Boston's former commissioner of cultural affairs, worked on the code changes with him. "Jack always worked," he says, "to get artists equal rights."
Artists were not the only people McLaughlin helped. He built commercial projects, low-income housing and a center for battered women. (For the latter, he refused payment.)
But it was McLaughlin's work with artists that brought him to Seattle. In November 1997, he attended a city-sponsored Symposium on Artists' Live/Work Space. At the time, he had just begun the Laconia Lofts, a hundred-unit, ground-up project in the South End of Boston. Half the occupants of this now-completed building are artists - and the quality of their homes has already won awards.
Notes Rossley, "This is not a lily-white project, either. Jack always worked closely with artists of color. He wanted projects that would look like the art community."
The artists who dealt with McLaughlin are full-equity owners of their spaces, for he firmly believed that artists should be owners. "The way he achieved it was what captivated me," says Santa Fe's John Villani, author of The 100 Best Art Towns in America. Three days before he died, McLaughlin took Villani around his Boston projects.
Says the writer, "He had an incredible ability to multi-layer a project, with low-income artists, working professionals and interesting businesses. It was inspirational."
McLaughlin promoted this very recipe in Seattle. On his visit in 1997, he told The Seattle Times it was how developers here should invest. "I know from direct experience artists make excellent clients. More than any other group, they pay their bills. Plus, people like to be where the artists are; that ambiance they bring along is highly commercial.
"But Seattle developers," he added, "are suspicious. . .They make a lot of noise about their artists but they just don't get it. Those artists made their neighborhoods. And now they want them out."
Bruce Rossley knew McLaughlin for more than 18 years. "I know Jack had great feeling for the people he met in Seattle. I spoke to him in the morning on the very day he died. He was just on top of the world, already planning his next two projects."
McLaughlin was buried on Dec. 18, after a candlelight vigil held by Boston area artists, a proclamation of his importance by Mayor Thomas Menino and a funeral attended by more than 600 people. Now, the news of his passing is beginning to reach further afield. "People are calling from all over the country," said Rossley. "I took three calls from the Northwest just this morning.
"The terrible thing is that, for artists, there is no one to take Jack's place. No one has his mixture of true business savvy and real integrity."
Seattle's arts community, however, is buzzing with vivid memories. For fashion designer Scott Kuhlman, it's "the crackling sound of the cellophane from all those cigarette packets." For musician Jon Dumbrowski, "it's the way Jack placed extravagant bids on my girlfriend's work at her show." For photographer (and ex-Microsoft exec) Tom Corddry, "It's great that Jack's receiving so many accolades. But I'd trade them in for 10 more years with him around.