A rendering of the main gallery. (WXY Architecture)

After spending a decade looking for a new home further downtown, the Drawing Center decided to stay put in Soho, at 35 Wooster Street. The building has been under renovation for more than a year now, but it will finally reopen to the public in November, throwing open its cast-iron doors to the etching-obsessed.

"Artists today are redefining the outer reaches of what constitutes drawing-whether they are drawing in cyberspace or on buildings, doing animation, or making marks through the movements of dancers," the center's executive director, Brett Littman, said in a release. "This space serves that future."

The Drawing Center will reopen Nov. 3 with a distinctly Latin flavor: a show entitled "Guillermo Kuitca: Diarios" in the main gallery, the first museum exhibition of that series of the Argentine artist's work, as well as Colombian artist José Antonio Suárez Londoño's "The Yearbook" project. Meanwhile, "In Deed: Certificates of Authenticity in Art"questions the very nature of the medium, as well as whether certificates themselves qualify as artworks.

The space was set to reopen in September, but like any good art project, these things always take a bit longer than expected.

Is there an artist living here? (Photo by Dan A/Flickr)

Not surprisingly, many people living in Soho and Noho are not too happy about a real estate group's plan to survey loft residents in the neighborhood to ensure that at least one person in each loft is an artist, as city law requires. DNAinfo has been following this one closely and reports:

Community Board 2 chair Brad Hoylman said he was "shocked" by the plan to survey the area roughly bordered by Astor Place, the Bowery, Canal Street and West Broadway — and said the board planned to look into whether it was legal.

"I am very concerned that this survey could amount to landlord harassment," Hoylman said. "There are laws against this sort of incursion on tenants' rights to quiet enjoyment, and I hope that city officials take the appropriate action to protect them."

The group, billing itself as the SoHo/NoHo Action Committee, wants to prove that artists no longer reside in many of the artist-zoned lofts, and aims to have the rule stricken. Some potential loft buyers who are not artists have reportedly balked at pulling the trigger on such homes, fearing their lack of certified artistic talent would result in them getting the boot if the city decided to enforce the law.

Soho, once known as Hell's Hundred Acres. (Photo by Dan A/Flickr)

If you reside in a SoHo or NoHo loft, some people may soon be knocking on your door hoping to ask some questions about your occupation. Various real-estate types have established a group called the SoHo/NoHo Action Committee aimed at determining whether the lofts in those neighborhoods, which are legally mandated to house an artist, do, in fact, comply with that rule, DNAinfo reports. The organization plans to hire surveyors (it's aiming to raise $25,000) to determine that. Door-to-door knocking is one of the tactics on the table.

The group's goal is to prove that artists no longer reside in many of the lofts and have the artist-in-residence regulations stricken from the books. Right now, it seems, many potential buyers are hesitant to pull the trigger on artist-zoned lofts in the area, since they're afraid someone from the city government will enforce the regulations, giving them the boot. (That said, quite a few people are believed to be skirting the rule.) CurbedNY reports that about 200 lofts are covered by the current rules. Here's DNAinfo:

Prudential Douglas Elliman luxury real estate agent Leonard Steinberg, a supporter of Baisley's committee, said he recently had a non-artist client pass on buying a $15 million home in SoHo rather than try to buy illegally.

The city needs to change with the times, Steinberg said.

"These rules are government stupidity," he said. "I'd say 80 percent of people who live in SoHo now are not artists, but the government has a problem redefining the neighborhood."

The artist-in-residence guidelines were established in the 1970s to encourage artists to live and work in the area, which was far less tony at the time. (Oddly, "interpretive" artists like dancers, musicians and actors do not fit the bill.) One broker said that the law now hurts artists:

Real estate broker and certified artist Susan Meisel said the artist-in-residence rules now hurt the very people they were designed to protect. Aging artists sometimes have trouble selling their properties, she said.

In December 2010, the 35-year-old gallery paid $2.4 million for a loft on the second floor of its long-time home at 35 Wooster Street. The purchase provided the space necessary to facilitate a consolidation and reorganization of its facilities at 35 Wooster, ensuring the gallery’s future in Soho.

“We decided to stay, that we have this asset, let‘s build on what we have,” Brett
Littman, executive director of the Drawing Center said during a recent tour, referring not only to his building but the still thriving if somewhat stultified neighborhood surrounding it. “We settled on a gradual, incremental growth, one we can actually sustain.”

Mr. Littman said he hoped the project, known as ReDraw, could even serve as a model for other institutions, the recent demise of the American Folk Art Museum still fresh in so many nonprofits’ minds. He even said it was possible for the Drawing Center to slowly colonize the building, buying up condos as they become available.

For now, the 9,150 square feet of space the institution has on the ground floor, half of the second and in the basement will have to suffice. The center began the $8.6 million project last July and aims to reopen in September.

“Moving upstairs harkens back to our time as a Soho pioneer, when Martha Beck left MoMA and opened up here on the top floor of a fifth-floor walk-up,” Mr. Littman said.

The director added that Soho can offer a unique, inviting viewing experience, one attuned to the ebbs and flows of New Yorkers: maybe a little brunch, some shopping, an hour at the Drawing Center, then coffee or drinks, all within a few blocks. “I hate going to Chelsea,” he said, by way of explanation. He also shared fond recollections of gallivanting in the neighborhood as a teenager, when Soho was still wild.

Venturing inside the space now, hard hat firmly in place, one discovers barren bricks, rough rafters and floorboards, all of which appear to date to the building’s origins in the middle of the 19th century, one of the first on the block. The basement is nothing but mounds of dirt.

A new foundation, two feet deeper, is being laid. This will help accommodate the Lab, a hybrid gallery, educational space and a conference center where exhibitions can be held but also where students and artists can gather to study, debate and create art.

The main floor will look closer to the previous iteration of the Drawing Center, with a book store at the entrance and two galleries beyond. The one in back, where the old offices used to be, is called the Drawing Room. It will have an unusual skylight: a concave drop ceiling will hang a few feet below the glass, directing light against the wall. An inch-wide slit will filter light into the space, creating an effect halfway between Louis Kahn’s Kimmel Art Center and a James Turrell piece.

“You won’t be able to see the sky, but you will be able to sense the passage of time,” Claire Weisz, a principal at WXY, the firm undertaking the renovations, said during the tour. Light may well be the most important feature of the renovations. A brand new, state-of-the-art LED system will be installed, giving the greatest level of control, and providing access to fragile collections the Drawing Center might not previously have been able to borrow because of inferior environmental conditions (the heating and cooling systems have also been upgraded for this reason). “Those old light bulbs were incredibly expensive and difficult to deal with,” Mr. Littman said.

Still, the changes are meant more in the service of art than anything else. “It will be better in terms of loans, yes,” Mr. Littman said. “But ultimately, it’s about creating the perfect viewing experience, the perfect symmetry and balance for viewing drawings.”

And by drawings he does not necessarily mean drawings, either. “Drawing is no
longer practiced only on paper, it’s no longer just wall work,” Mr. Littman said. “A lot of what’s going to happen here is based on the space itself and how it’s configured.” Ms. Weisz said the space has been designed like that of a museum, with all the same
environmental controls in every space, and the ability to build it out however. If someone wants to combine galleries or put on a show in the office space, they easily can. There is also ample opportunity for digital work—the gallery no longer houses an archive onsite, though everything will be accessible on computers.

“We want to provide the maximum flexibility to the artists, and for the future of the center,” Ms. Weisz added. The hope is that, in the future, new architects will transform the space for various shows.

Even the simple fact that the center is consolidating its offices, which had been split between 35 Wooster and a leased space across the street at 40 Wooster, is seen as a boon for productivity and creativity. "We used to just hold meetings in the middle of the street sometimes because that was the only way you could get everyone together," Mr. Littman said.

Once completed, ReDraw will bring a decade-long saga to a close. As most New Yorkers and even a good deal of Americans may well recall, the center was one of many early controversies at Ground Zero, when some thickheaded politicians and pundits felt the art it featured was un-American and thus unfit to be featured on holy ground. This led, in 2006, to a proposed move to South Street Seaport, a plan twice the size and many times the cost of the current one. The collapse of Lehman Brothers brought that idea to an end, though Mr. Littman and his board like to believe that their decision wound up being the most prudent one.

“We took a really long walk in the forest,” he said. “After 10 years, we wound up back where we started, and when we looked around, the trees were still there.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC