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27 <br />The community talked about the need for a permanent, large-scale, low-rent <br />facility for art-making, exhibition, and performance—a place that reinforces the <br />city’s commitment to artists and serves to draw “creatives” to San Leandro to live <br />and work. As artists are finding it difficult to continue to live and work in the Bay <br />area because of the high cost of real estate, San Leandro can position itself as the <br />artist-friendly alternative. They want to bring as many artists as possible to the <br />city and to support art making at multiple levels. <br />People want the art to balance the city’s tech direction with a sense of nature, <br />warmth, craft, and community and to be an edifying experience of the human <br />spirit. This is especially true for millennials, a generation that “likes to text on their <br />high-tech phones wrapped in a hand-made leather case, listen to music through a <br />digital service and collect vinyl’s, stream movies on their laptops in their Victorian <br />apartment on a vintage couch with original hardwood floors, use ride-sharing <br />services available on their smart phones and ride their bike with a hand-made <br />wood rear-rack in a bike friendly neighborhood.” <br />The community wants to experience art in unconventional places like buses and <br />billboards, vacant storefronts, in parks and on bike trails, and for young children <br />to encourage and develop a future generation of artists. Utilizing industrial spaces <br />to host classes and artist residencies can celebrate San Leandro’s industrial <br />history by tying it into existing factories. <br /> “ As artists are finding it difficult to <br />continue to live and work in the Bay <br />area because of the high cost of real <br />estate, San Leandro can position <br />itself as the artist-friendly alternative. <br />They want to bring as many artists as <br />possible to the city and to support art <br />making at multiple levels.” <br />38