Post Street: We're In!

The news:  we finally gained access to the new gallery space!  We won't take possession until the build-out is closer to completion, but basically it is ours now.  And it's been quite a long road getting here.

Negotiations for the lease on the new Post Street space started in August of last year.  The space is on the second floor above the Ilori eye glass store, and used to be a bridal salon -- everything white, lots of mirrors, and huge changing rooms to accommodate the giant wedding dresses.

We spent two months negotiating initially at a very low rate per square foot per year, then the landlord got a better offer from another client for a very high rate per square foot per year.  (For my non-US readers, one square meter is about 10 square feet).  New to the world of commercial real estate, I still think it's odd that they talk in square feet per year, rather than per month. 

Whatever, we were screwed by this new potential tenant with deep pockets.  So we found another newer and cooler space South of Market -- an old catholic girls school gymnasium converted to gallery spaces.  The coolest thing about that space, in my opinion, was a custom Keith Haring mural commissioned for the gym in 1985, but sold in 2006 to raise money for the school. 

I had dreams about bringing that mural back to SF in the original space on Clementina Street.  Actually, there were a lot of great things about that space, but in the end, it was more than we wanted to spend, and the original space on Post Street opened up again.  Two more months of negotiating at Post Street and we got a very reasonable rate and it's now ours as of this week.


Tomorrow we meet with the contractor to finalize the "tenant improvements" that the landlord will pay for after we agreed to a five year lease.  Knock down a couple walls, build a new one.  Cover a door, add another.  Paint.  Floors.  Here are a couple of "before" picture.  Check back here for status on the build-out!

Cheers!

Updated May 4, 2010.

Hello, world!

My computer science friends will recognize "Hello, world!" as output from the canonical example of how to write a simple computer program.  My Twittering friends might recognize "Hello, world!" as the first Tweet sent by Bill Gates last month from his new Twitter account.  But for me, it is a greeting to my new career, my new colleagues, and my new workaday universe:  the world of contemporary art.  


After 20 years in a technology career that spanned heavy iron database software to the world of dot.com's, from the invention of the mobile web to YouTube and Google, I decided I was ready for a new challenge.  Spending the past year on sabbatical, I spent some time with a friend at her gallery, and realized this was a perfect new field for me.  I buy art.  I look at art.  I talk about art.  Now I will also sell art.  I am now a full time gallerist at Cain Schulte Contemporary Art.  (Web site yet to be updated.  Add that to the to-do list...)

Last week my new partners and I signed a lease for a new gallery space in Union Square. Now we're waiting for the landlord to sign a week later...  251 Post Street has a number of other galleries (and the west coast bureau of my favorite newspaper, the Financial Times).  It's a great location, and is one of the few destinations in San Francisco for art collectors, both local and visiting.


As soon as the landlord signs, the race begins to finalize the build-out plans, flooring, furniture, and everything else necessary to run a gallery and a small business.  We're beefing up infrastructure for inventory and client management, working on the marketing and business plans, as well as the programming for the next 6-9 months.  (n.b., "programming" in this case refers to selecting the art and artists that we plan to represent and display, not the computer-style programming referenced above.  I'm learning a whole new vocabulary, and you will too, if you keep reading my blog!)


Over the next few weeks I'll introduce my new partners and artists, and discuss our travails and successes (hopefully more successes than set-backs) in physically moving from a temporary space in the Mission to the big league that is Union Square.


Cheers!


Updated May 4, 2010.