Chair Williams and Randi Berry discuss cultural land trusts and international models
Chair mentions reading about cultural land trusts in Canada; Berry says she just returned from a Helsinki conference on creative land trusts with 11 countries and 26 cities, and notes successful models often start with city-donated adaptive reuse and long leases.
And the last thing I was going to say is I read this book about cultural land trust in Canada.
I don't know how that would apply here, but it's something that I read about and I was thinking a lot about because we do have CLTs.
They're not necessarily focused on culture, but New York City does have a CLT ecosystem.
I just got back from a conference in Helsinki, specifically around creative land trusts.
And I'll tell you, there was 11 countries and 26 cities represented.
And we're behind.
We're really, really behind.
I only read that one article and that was about an area in Canada.
So clearly there's more cities and countries that have this.
There's incredible work happening and it all roots from city participation and connection to nonprofit organizations that are delivering space.
In every case that's been successful, it started with adaptive reuse that was donated by the city.
So you capitalize an organization with a big property, and then they're able to operate it at scale at low cost for a lot of people.
And in these other countries, they're talking about we focus on 99-year leases.
They have 999-year leases.
It's a 1,000-year lease in England.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
There's a lot to be done with collaboration.
Wow.
Thank you.
I always appreciate being informed in these hearings because you all are the...
So thank you so much.