Architectural drawing of Pajama Factory revitalization plan by Filson and Rohrbacher
The creative, cultural entrepreneurs and explorers who pioneered new lifestyles in dilapidated urban neighborhoods are identified as the “creative class,” a term coined by Richard Florida in his 2004 ground-breaking book The Rise of the Creative Class. Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy. Just as William Whyte’s 1956 classic The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life, Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant. Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have. Our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing. Leading this transformation are the 40 million Americans—over one-third of our national workforce—who create for a living. This “creative class” is found in a variety of fields, from engineering to theater, biotech to education, architecture to small business. Their choices have already had a huge economic impact. In the future they will determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither.
The creative class is responsible for transforming the New York City neighborhoods of Soho and Tribeca in Manhattan and more recently Dumbo, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. In 1984 my wife and I moved into a mostly abandoned warehouse district in New York City, and over the years we witnessed the regenerative power of the creative class movement firsthand. The population of our neighborhood expanded as more and more people discovered its charms. The previously abandoned warehouse buildings were slowly repurposed, renovated with loft spaces for working and living. As these spaces are generally larger than typical city apartments, young families stayed in the city to raise their families rather than move to the suburbs. Small parks were constructed to give the young children a place to play. New schools were built to meet the increasing demand for classrooms. Empty ground floors were converted into stores and restaurants. The new schools then attracted a wider crosssection of people and families, and now, after 25 or 30 years, the neighborhood, known as Tribeca, has been completely transformed into one of the most desirable places to live in New York City.
While investments were made by the city government for the parks and schools, they were generally made after the growing community developed the need. I think this is an important point to note: the investments were made to solve community problems. The improved services and infrastructure then allowed the community to continue growing. This was NOT a “build it and they will come” approach to economic development. The community was not created with government-sponsored master plans and development money; the growth was organic and homespun. The economic development bubbled up from the collective efforts of the individuals who moved to the once nearly abandoned neighborhood.
This creative class is also transforming many other smaller towns and cities such as Hudson, New York, and Paducah, Kentucky. In the year 2000 the city officials of Paducah, a town of 25,000 that had been de-populating for decades, recognized the advantages of attracting artists and creative entrepreneurs to their town. An arts district was designated with new mixed-use zoning rules that allowed live/work spaces in what was previously an exclusively residential neighborhood. Economic incentives were then offered to artists who chose to relocate to Paducah. These incentives include grants for moving assistance, start-up business costs, business marketing, rehab costs, property acquisition assistance, and even specific assistance for restaurants. Now, twelve years into the program, the town is a thriving destination for artists and tourists alike. The program has become a national model for using the arts for economic development. While the Paducah program is managed from the “top” through the town’s economic and community development offices, the incentives consist of direct assistance to many individual artists and small businesses. It is really individuals’ investments in time and money that are fueling the renaissance of Paducah.
Williamsport has the seeds of an arts district of its own in and around the former Weldon’s factory located on the west side of town. The eight-building complex, more recently known as Raytowne, covers two city blocks and has been bought and renamed the Pajama Factory by my wife and me, with the goal of developing it into “a place to make things.”
If the Pajama Factory could be successful in becoming a workplace that is attractive to creatives, it would also be a small-business incubator that would be regenerative not only for the Pajama Factory itself but also for a wider “arts district” that would naturally surround the factory. And even though it is recognized that things are a little rough around the edges, the Pajama Factory’s neighborhood is filled with a kind of quality and integrity that is rapidly disappearing in America. It can be imagined that the revitalized and energized neighborhood would one day be filled with restaurants, shops, and micro-manufacturers.
Having spent years as architects working in and around and repurposing century-old manufacturing buildings, we knew how to build attractive and inexpensive workspaces. But was it possible to willfully build a cool and hip community from scratch? Could life blossom in a place where there was just a weak pulse at the time? When we bought the building the Paducah experiment was getting some note, but its success was far from assured. Besides, Paducah had the direct support of the city government, including a litany of financial incentives for people to relocate to the town backed up by a sizable marketing budget—advantages that were nonexistent in Williamsport.
Now, four and a half years after the purchase of the original Keds sneaker factory, the renamed Pajama Factory is becoming known in national and even international circles. A diverse mix of nearly 60 tenants have filled virtually all of the improved and subdivided spaces that have been built, and even some of the unimproved space. There is a waiting list for studio spaces that has over 100 names on it. Artists and artisans are spending their days (and nights) making the brilliant and the beautiful within the building. The tenants are collaborating among themselves; communal shop spaces for photography, clay, printing, and woodworking have been started. Church groups, political rallies, and Sunday potluck dinners happen at regular intervals under the Pajama Factory roof. In short, the Pajama Factory community is thriving.
And the surrounding neighborhood is showing improvements as well. Just one block away a large church edifice was renovated into a number of higher-end apartments. Three new restaurants have opened, and the bowling alley across the street is under new management and has been completely refurbished. And Pajama Factory tenants have purchased at least two homes in the neighborhood. These are small steps, but they point to a bright future as long as the momentum of growth can continue.
So oddly, the hardest part, establishing the creative community, seems to have been accomplished here in Williamsport. Now the challenge will be to maintain the current momentum so that the gains made to date will be multiplied and become selfsustaining. This will require a substantial capital stream to feed ongoing renovation efforts that are necessary to restore the 300,000-square-foot historic complex and meet the demand for additional studio spaces. Traditionally, this capital would have been provided by a combination of state, federal, bank and private funding sources, but these post financial-crisis times are particularly challenging. It remains to be seen where the next round of required funds will come from, and the Pajama Factory revitalization project will stall without further financial support from any of these entities.
A historical note on the PJ Factory by Alison Hirsch
The Pajama Factory was once, yes, a pajama factory, Weldon’s Manufacturing Company, which claimed to be the largest pajama factory in the world in the 1950s. But the buildings began as something else altogether. From 1882, the complex served as the factory of the Lycoming Rubber Company, which manufactured rubber boots, shoes, and soles on the site for fi fty years, from 1882 to 1932. At its height, the company employed 600 workers here, about half men and half women, who produced the fi rst mass-marketed athletic shoes, Keds sneakers, in 1917.
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