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Asheville’s arts community is nationally known – artists who express their creativity through painting, sculpture, metal works, clay, photography, and many other media have found their way to the city and now call it home. What some people may not know, however, is the economic force these combined talents have made themselves. HandMade in America, a non-profit, grassroots organization that has been nurturing craft culture and community in Western North Carolina for 10 years, completed a Creative Economy Study earlier this year that confirms the impact of the arts community on Asheville’s downtown commercial core. The study examined the “Super Creative Core,” as defined in Richard Florida’s 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class.” Businesses that encompass fields such as arts, design, entertainment, media, education, training, library, life, physical, social science, architecture, engineering, computer, and mathematical occupations are considered to be part of the “Creative Class”. The study calculated the percentage of occupied space that the Creative Economy constituted in each building in downtown Asheville. Results indicated that the Creative Economy inhabits 1.7 million square feet of downtown’s occupied building space (28% of total occupied space surveyed). The study further determined that the total annual real estate value of the Creative Economy for downtown Asheville is $61.7 million.
A full report on the Creative Economy Study of Downtown Asheville is available for purchase at www.handmadeinamerica.org. For more information, please call HandMade in America at 828-252-0121.
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“This confirms Asheville’s reputation as a center of the Creative Economy based solely on the measurement of the real estate value,” said David Newell, Chairman of the Board for HandMade in America.