An artist works at her laptop beside a sleeping cat, with paintings from Allegory behind her.
The artist puts on her glasses. The cat looks up. A notification sounds: PING!
Seen from behind, the artist and cat read an article about the Wolff Building's sale.
Read the article
Her inner thoughts: $170,000,000! I’ve seen this play… selling the “upside”… pitching higher rent potential and a “repositioned asset”… which means the artists will be repositioned somewhere else! 200 artist studios become prime office space, with enough desks crammed onto each floor to make that outrageous price pencil out. Then the tenants who exist in the spreadsheet fail to materialize, the loan goes into default, and our value-add genius Buyer discovers that nobody could have anticipated market conditions. The artists are gone, the building is empty, and the lawyers are fully booked. Unless we get title into a nonprofit committed to keeping the studios, we’re watching the opening scene of another Chelsea disaster. Something needs to be done.

This cycle needs to stop. Protect artists’ studios and keep artists in New York.

Studio Act

Qualified Cultural Studio Use

Three legislative proposals — two bills and one resolution
Anne-Brigitte Sirois
New York · October 21, 2026

Studio Act grew out of the effort to preserve New York’s largest artist studio building, in Chelsea, through nonprofit ownership, with the artists in place. That effort exposed a contradiction: the artists’ continued occupancy under existing leases prevented access to tax-exempt bond financing that could have helped secure their studios.

Studio Act proposes changing New York’s property-tax law so studios owned and operated by nonprofits within a qualifying cultural program can receive a property-tax exemption. Artists already in place could remain under existing agreements, subject to continued artistic use and nonprofit oversight.

An accompanying Senate resolution would call for federal changes to give qualifying nonprofit studio programs access to lower-cost, tax-exempt bond financing.

Help make these changes possible.
Urge Senator Erik Bottcher to advance these measures.

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