Alma Wieser has long had a dream. It involves saving Heaven Gallery, the Wicker Park vintage shop and arts space founded by David Dobie in 1997. Dobie is now president of Heaven’s board of directors; Wieser has spearheaded the gallery for the past several years. When Wieser speaks of what the gallery means to her, and how formative it was to spend time in Wicker Park in the 90s and early 2000s, her enthusiasm is catching. Like Greenwich Village in the early 60s or the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, you had to be there.
There were the venues Hothouse and Double Door, the beloved Busy Bee restaurant and the eclectic coffeehouse Urbus Orbis, and—thanks to cheap rents—loads of artist studios and galleries. When Wieser waxes poetic about the neighborhood, it sounds a bit like Portlandia’s “Dream of the 90s”; the song describes a time when “people were talking about getting piercings” and “forming bands” and you could “go to a record store and sell your CDs.”
Over the years, her dream of saving her gallery, which has rented space in the Lubinski building at 1550 N. Milwaukee since 2000, has expanded to a plan to save the entire building and preserve it as a center for the arts, with a focus on racial equity. (It requires that the board, building tenants, and staff be a 60 percent BIPOC majority.) “Arts and culture saved this neighborhood in the 90s,” Wieser says. “I think we can save it again, by creating this arts anchor right in the center.”
Under the plan, Equity Arts, a nonprofit founded by Wieser, would buy and redevelop the building and then place it in a perpetual purpose trust, taking it out of market speculation. The ground floor of the 38,000-square-foot building would offer retail space, the revenue of which would offset the rental cost of the six spaces above it, which “will house galleries, artist residencies, and nonprofit arts organizations,” according to Equity Arts’s website.
Wieser has been working on this plan since 2018; Equity Arts became a nonprofit in 2020. The organization has been working on raising the necessary funds—some $17 million, but its feasibility was unclear until May 2, when the city announced its spring 2023 grant finalists under the Chicago Recovery Plan, awarding $54 million to 133 businesses, developers, and nonprofits in order to spark economic recovery from the pandemic. Among those awardees were Equity Arts and the organization XChange Grand Crossing, which were each given $5 million, the largest grants available.
Courtesy Heaven Gallery
For Wieser, the grant was a godsend. “Heaven Gallery saved my life and now it will also be saved,” she wrote in the Instagram caption announcing the grant. But for some of the Lubinski building’s other tenants, the news was just the latest wrinkle in what has been an ongoing conflict. Along with Heaven and Lubinski Furniture, the ground-floor store of building owner Ken Lubinski, 1542-1550 N. Milwaukee also houses the gallery LVL3, the artist David Moose, and the experimental artist-run spaces No Nation and Tritriangle.
No Nation and Tritriangle potentially stand to be displaced in the current Equity Arts plan. As these tenants see it, it’s one thing to be displaced by a potential corporation—many of which have snatched up property in the neighborhood in recent years—but to be displaced by a nonprofit pledging to preserve the arts, and with city funding, is another thing entirely.
“It’s been maddening these past years to think that someone across the wall from us would be our biggest threat, to our livelihood, to our stability, to our home,” says Aza Greenlee, co-directrix of No Nation.
For Wieser, the conversation around what spaces might occupy the future Equity Arts building are premature. The organization has until November to close on the building and it needs to raise an additional $6 million by then. (The group will also be using a $5 million loan to help finance the project.) Their proposed model, a perpetual purpose trust, is meant to “ensure that the building is protected against any future sale” and “will remain a community controlled asset in perpetuity.”
“I think what’s important here is that we are still in this struggle to buy the building,” Wieser says. “I feel like the conversation with them is kind of like if we can make it happen. . . . Because without us buying the building then nothing matters.”
By all accounts, Wieser and LVL3 (which is slated to be a part of Equity Arts; LVL3 director Vincent Uribe is on the board) have long had a strained relationship with Tritriangle, run by artist Ryan Dunn, and No Nation, which was cofounded by WAmaya Torres in 2010. Part of what’s at issue here is that Dunn lives at Tritriangle with his family, and Torres and Greenlee similarly use No Nation as a live/work space—which the building is zoned for. Though Wieser and Uribe used to live in their respective spaces as well, they have both since moved out. (David Moose also uses his unit as live/work; he did not respond to an email asking to be interviewed.) “Since Equity Arts’ inception artist housing has not been part of our mission,” the organization wrote on its Instagram last October. Equity Arts’s stance on housing has actually shifted over time. (Wieser says the organization has no plans to apply for a rezoning of the building.)
Credit: Eugene Tang
Last October, Reader staff writer Leor Galil broke the story about the potential displacement of No Nation and Tritriangle, both unique in the city’s landscape. No Nation has regular programming, often focusing on performance art; last year they held 30 exhibitions, worked with over 250 artists from around the world, and co-organized an international performance festival in Bogotá. They also offer an artist-in-residency program, geared towards experimental performance artists. Tritriangle, founded in 2012, is a home for sound art and other time-based media, regularly holding programming and fostering community engagement. (Before its founding, the DIY sound space Enemy occupied the unit.) Following the Reader’s story, No Nation created a Change.org petition calling “for transparency and accuracy of ‘Equity Arts’ goals.” It currently has 835 signatures. There was an outcry on social media, with one Instagram user noting, “So forcefully evicting the current residents of nonation [sic] is a viable solution to the issues of the lack of affordable spaces for artists? Get real . . . ” Equity Arts subsequently called a public town hall, inviting No Nation and Tritriangle “to discuss how we can support and work with organizations in alignment with our mission during this process.”
Credit: Kerry Cardoza
On November 9, around 100 people gathered at Heaven Gallery for the town hall. I arrived a few minutes before 7 PM, when it was slated to start; someone had scrawled Boycott Heaven Gallery on the door leading upstairs. At the start, Wieser, Uribe, Heaven Gallery manager Francine Almeda, Torres, and Greenlee were seated in front of the audience, along with moderator Andrea Change, the executive director of Guild Literary Complex, who was invited by Wieser. Heather McShane, who assistant directs Tritriangle, later joined.
The meeting began with Wieser reading a statement, noting right off that bat, “I also want to announce tonight that Equity Arts is shifting our position to support housing as part of the project, we look forward to your programming as it always was.” Wieser goes on to describe her negative experiences with Dunn, before shifting gears and apologizing. “I regret this lack of communication but we are here today to listen and for accountability,” she says, later adding, “We support self-determination of each space. I mean that.”
The town hall ran for two hours and more than once descended into personal attacks, but by the end Equity Arts had agreed to include No Nation and Tritriangle in their plan, granting them autonomy and the ability to remain living in their spaces. Wieser also agreed to add both spaces to the Equity Arts website, in response to an accusation by No Nation that they had been invisibilized. The moderator noted, before closing, that it seemed the next step would be continued conversations among all the groups, perhaps followed by another public conversation at a later date.
Though there was a glimmer of hope that the conflict was moving toward a resolution at the end of the town hall, as of late June, there has been little communication between the parties. After that event, in November, Wieser sent an email to No Nation, Tritriangle, and LVL3 asking to schedule a meeting to continue the conversation, but it never happened.
Torres says he was initially skeptical of the email because it came from Wieser’s personal account, not an Equity Arts email. Still, he responded with some requests, such as asking that Equity Arts remove a picture from its website featuring Black Lives Matter banners made by No Nation and Tritriangle, and that Wieser instead write to them from an official Equity Arts email account. Wieser removed the photo and, she says, updated the mission statement per their request. She also asked for language from the spaces in order to add their history to the Equity Arts website, which was one of the discussion points at the town hall. “Then the next email she sent me again [was] from her personal email account,” Torres says. “I don’t know if she was really taking it seriously. Because like, please write us from something that is not your personal account, you’re not speaking from yourself. It’s from this organization—so the conversation pretty much just stopped there.”
Tritriangle did not respond, Dunn says, because of what he calls Wieser’s history of “abusive” behavior with them. “I have not, and I saw no effort on their part to actually try to do anything to change that behavior to me. So I’m not ready to start responding,” he says. “They did ask for information from us, but I felt like I wasn’t ready to give them more information without any agreement that we were actually going to be given any kind of agency in the organization. I was hesitant to say, ‘Yes, here’s our information about Tritriangle,’ without any kind of understanding that it wasn’t just a smokescreen for them to continue to plan to kick us out.”
(In June, Tritriangle and No Nation were added to the Equity Arts website.)
Without communication among the tenants, rumors swirled. (Dunn found out about the grant from a parent at his child’s school.) Torres says they heard from a building employee that Wieser had asked the building owner to evict everyone, which she denies. (Lubinski did not respond to an email request for comment.) Neither No Nation nor Tritriangle have a clear sense of the timeline of Equity Arts’s plan or what, if any, rights they have as tenants. All the tenants currently have verbal month-to-month leases. Under Chicago’s Fair Notice Ordinance, landlords must provide “120 days of notice to terminate your lease if you have lived in your apartment for more than 3 years.”
Even if Equity Arts were to incorporate all the current tenants in their plan, the redevelopment would eventually require everyone to vacate. Wieser anticipates the renovations, which include making the building ADA-compliant, would take one year to complete. When asked if the current plan included housing, as agreed upon in the town hall, Wieser declined to answer. “I don’t really want to get into this,” she says, adding, “But I will say that we have a very good relationship with David Moose, who has lived in that building since I want to say the early 90s. He was there before Heaven was there. We have a wonderful relationship with him. We care for him very much. And he can stay. We’re working to see, if this all goes through, that he can stay in that space. So yes on that front.”
In June, after the grant announcement went out, No Nation reached out to Wieser to ask about the future of the building. That day Torres also reached out to the city, introducing No Nation’s work and asking that the Equity Arts grant not displace them from their space. The next day, No Nation posted an update to their Instagram, asking the art community to take action in their potential displacement. The post tagged many accounts affiliated with Heaven Gallery and Equity Arts, as well as their alderperson Daniel La Spata.
To Wieser, the post was combative. “Not even 24 hours from when they sent that email to me, requesting a meeting after six months of not saying a word, they started attacking us on social media,” she says.
So she didn’t respond to the email. But No Nation says the next morning, appraisers and architects came to their door asking to take measurements, which felt like its own aggressive response.
Both Torres and Dunn approached Alderperson La Spata about the situation. In May, La Spata reached out to the Department of Planning and Development, which oversees the Chicago Recovery Plan program, introducing the other tenants and asking that city funding not contribute to the displacement of the artists in the building. In mid-June, Tim Jeffries, DPD’s acting managing deputy commissioner, responded to the email thread to say the team was going to organize themselves “on the full scope” of the project, aiming to provide an update the week of June 26. As of July 5, the tenants had not received a follow-up to that email. In response to a request for comment, DPD deputy commissioner Peter Strazzabosco wrote to me, “DPD is aware of the potential issues among tenants and, along with DCASE, is communicating with affected parties about their respective concerns and goals.” He would not comment on whether DPD knew there were other tenants in the building when the grant application was under review or whether it was considering including provisions in the grant disbursement that would protect the live/work spaces of the current tenants. He also said the department cannot comment on specific applications before they’re finalized, which typically happens within a year of their announcement.
Though the support of La Spata has been encouraging, Dunn says, “It’s still a little disheartening that only after the grant has been given are we being centered as part of this. . . . Nobody has made any effort to reach out to us despite us having publicly tried to bring attention to this already.”
Torres wants to be clear that his intention is not to stop the work of Equity Arts; they have also urged their supporters online not to engage in personal attacks. “We’re not trying to bash or banish anyone,” they say. “This is an opportunity for the city and for the community to think about what it means to create an equitable space in an inequitable society, which is the space that we find ourselves.” Their hope is to be brought into the conversation to think of a workable solution for everyone, and to be allowed to stay in their current spaces at an affordable rent.
And to devil’s advocates who say the alternative to Equity Arts’s ownership is corporate development, Torres says, “If this building is bought with city money, to preserve the artistic history of it, we are an undeniable part of that. And we deserve to be there. I don’t discredit the work that they have done with their publicity, with their grant writing, and other stuff. They have done their work. We have done, also, a lot of work. People should not discount the other person’s work because it’s different.”
Uribe, of LVL3, says No Nation’s pushback stems from their desire for autonomy. “They were all invited to be a part of planning from the beginning but then they really wanted nothing to do with being managed by Alma,” he says. “But at the same time, like, then who’s gonna manage this project? To me, Alma’s done all the heavy lifting. . . . I just don’t know how a project this large then gets off the ground and becomes successful if there’s not somebody leading and pushing it. If someone else wants to step up, and do all the fundraising and get all these people in support, then great, but I think just getting in the way and trying to drag things down, where what would be the alternative is a developer just coming in, buying the building and everyone is kicked out and it turns into luxury condos and then nobody wins. I think it’s kind of unfortunate that that doesn’t really seem to be understood.”
For his part, Dunn is skeptical that any potential legal provisions, which No Nation is pushing for, would be strong enough to keep them in their space. “The best case scenario would be the city recognizing that Equity Arts doesn’t represent the building,” he says. “Like, on paper I understand why the city would say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna take this unused building and turn it into a space for people of color to have representation.’ That looks good on paper. But when you look at what is actually happening, where they’re actually planning to turn it more retail and displacing artists of color and families—it doesn’t represent that equity.”
Though he says it would be ideal to stay in their space, which has been a dedicated sound art space for many years. “These kind of spaces develop in an organic way because people find places where they are able to do things without presenting a problem,” he says. If Tritriangle is displaced, they’ll be forced to move to a more affordable neighborhood, which would likely make them part of yet another wave of gentrification.
“The only thing we can do is use this opportunity to draw light to it, in my mind,” he says. “I don’t see how we would have a place in Equity Arts without having to entangle ourselves with people who have been abusive to us, period.”
Looking at the missions of all of these art spaces, it seems as if it should be easy to find common ground. All are in service to artists, and all offer copious amounts of programming for free or nominal amounts. All have found some kind of sustainability for more than a decade, in large part because their spaces have stayed relatively affordable even as the neighborhood has filled with monuments to capitalism, from sweetgreen to Supreme to Urban Outfitters. Long gone are other artistic neighborhood markers: Double Door, the arts festival Around the Coyote, and the artists’ lofts of the Ludwig Drum Factory. There are obvious reasons why all these organizations want to remain where they are: Wicker Park is very accessible by public transit, the bustle of the neighborhood means their programming largely doesn’t upset the neighbors, and the affordability and space means they can focus on supporting artists, not raising funds for rent. The misalignment of their values seems to be at the heart of the problem.
“From what they put on the page, we’re on the same accordance. We don’t have any philosophical issue with what they propose, but it’s their actions,” Greenlee says. “Now it’s a matter of trust, too, or a matter of good faith and integrity. And it’s really hard to come to the table with someone who has no good faith intention of actually collaborating.”
“It has always been a situation where I think those two places [LVL3 and Heaven] have often felt superior or more important than the rest of us,” Dunn says. “And I don’t think that’s particularly justified. It’s just their perspective. . . . It seems to me, from my perspective, a whole lot of this is really about class.”
For Wieser, Equity Arts is “rooted in reciprocity” and how transformative “multiple art spaces that are collaborative could be.” That vision includes spaces that are largely open to the public. To her, it doesn’t make sense to include organizations that have been so at odds with Equity Arts into her plan, nor does it seem fair for them to reap the benefits of her work.
“It’s a lot of weight to carry,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like it’s unbearable, you know? Like, teaching myself to become a developer, to save Heaven Gallery, has been a dream of mine, but also the most difficult thing that I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
But to No Nation and Tritriangle, it seems unthinkable that the city would allow funds slotted for arts preservation to be used to actually displace artists and their longrunning spaces.
“This is one of the biggest questions: what is actually important to Chicago? Is it just making more retail spaces and more places to buy stuff? Or is it having more discussion and community and awareness of the world we live in?” Dunn asks. “I can’t change the whole city. I can only do the part that I’m doing, which is providing a space for artists and culture and bringing people who don’t represent a moneyed part of that culture.”
related stories
Wicker Park arts spaces TriTriangle and No Nation face the ax
On Saturday, October 22, Wicker Park experimental arts space TriTriangle hosts a tenth-anniversary show featuring Chicago electronicist Rush Falknor, local free-jazz and new-music multi-instrumentalist Kyle Gregory Price, and media and performance artist Ryan Dunn, among others. Dunn lives at TriTriangle with his family and curates its performances, but the future of the space is in…
Jason Soliday may have closed Enemy, but he’s still presenting great shows in the space
Long live Post-Enemy and Tritriangle
‘Fête Galante’ invites us to celebrate lavishly
An art party of women artists opens at Heaven Gallery.