SeattlePrintmakersCenter

os150517 My Golden Eggs: Value your customers because they are gold 

 Beginning to survey and update his database to connect with the business plan of Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc., the author reflects on the use of “Golden Eggs” as an expression to describe his patrons and is amazed to discover its use in “Angry Birds.”

Neighborhood of Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc.

When the Seattle Arts and Culture office suggested that art activists in our Uptown Queen Anne collect names of arts and culture groups and artists’ names and the square-footage that they devote to their art and culture, several things happened. I contacted the one who is in charge of tracking artists’ space in Seattle last year when I was surveying likely sites for the Seattle Printmakers Center, and our meeting had a domino effect.

At first, I thought the SPC should not be centralized, but that it should be dispersed in areas of Seattle. Or, it might be centralized, but its outreach programs would go all over—from the Pike Place Market (where Ethan Lind was helping me start up the Buskeresque Etcher) to my neighborhood Mini Art Gallery and beyond.

When I discovered that an apartment building was going up next door to the Mini Art Gallery with 105-units and about the same square-footage for living as I planned at the SPC (69,000 sq. ft. compared to my 60,000 sq. ft. SPC “Media House” plan), it changed my thinking. The ground level would be a place where the Seattle Printmakers Center “visible” activities could be situated.

The Arts and Culture contact encouraged me to meet the architect and anyone else associated with it. The administrative architect pointed me to the developer, owner of the property. It is where Silver Platters used to have its store, next to the parking lot. The entire half-block would become one building, with an plaza inside. It happens that, next door, another apartment building with street-level shops would be built, too, by a different developer.

This is the background to the Golden Eggs in the title. I became aware that I needed to meet more neighborhood people who might give their support and advice as I move forward to create the SPC. Through the architect, I got the dates of the Design Commission meetings where the building plan would be evaluated and, next, the Uptown Alliance Design Framework planners.

At the first Uptown Alliance meeting I attended (after many years’ absence) we were shown an APP called “SeattleInProgress” that laid construction sites over Google Maps. Each construction site was marked with the familiar yellow pointer. I thought of the language in the Seattle Arts and Culture survey, “Golden Eggs” as it referred to the gooses, i.e., the artists who are the ones who lay the golden eggs, arts and cultural benefits in the community. I pictured little golden eggs dotting the Uptown neighborhood, each one indicating an arts and culture resource.

Business plan

At the stage I am in of writing the business plan for the Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc., I now come the section that comes really hard for me: the financials. As I plunged into the task of writing profit and loss statements based on past performance, financial projections under the new plan, and financial analyses of all types, I came again to realize that, if I am one of the geese that lay the golden eggs in Uptown, then it is my patrons who are the “golden eggs.” Because, without my art patrons and people who bought my original presses, then I would be just another goose.