Crain's weighs in...

“Young artists are bouncing away from the idea of going to New York because the costs here are so dramatic,” Elmes said Monday. “Detroit is a city that wants to reinvent itself while holding onto its past. It has a ballast of history and the opportunity to write its own future.

“While the city is experimenting, we can be experimenting.”

Galapagos, which Elmes said has $2 million per year in annual revenue, plans an ambitious — and expensive — renovation project over the next decade for the buildings he purchased for a song over the last year or so.

Among them are a 125,000-square-foot building at 1800 18th St. in Corktown for $500,000 from Eighteenth Street Investment Co. and five buildings totaling 300,000 square feet for $18,000 from the Highland Park School District, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service.

Elmes and top Galapagos management like Finance Director Moti Nahmany and Technical Director Kris Anton expect renovations — including the construction of a 10,000-square-foot indoor lake in one of the buildings — to cost $100 to $150 per square foot, or $60 million to $90 million.
“The arts have suffered far too long from the tin cup mentality of looking for grants and assistance where they should be looking for a funding model that’s sustainable,” he said, noting that Galapagos doesn’t accept government funding or grants for its operations costs.

“An organization typically spends 30 percent of its time fundraising. We can spend that same amount of time marketing the artists we produce, and when the curtains open with a larger audience, that’s bigger revenues.”