Seattle Live/Work Lofts for Artists?

Urban Living regularly receives a high amount of traffic on an old 2008 post about live/work lofts for sale in Seattle. Recent comments suggest that some of that traffic is artists looking for affordable live/work lofts where they can practice their craft. And boy is that old post not helping :).

Urban Living is mostly focused on new construction condos and apartments and we don’t track live/work spaces for artists too closely; however, I took a few minutes to track down some resources. Here’s a short list of what I found:

• Arts Resource Network – Hands down the most informative of all the sites I looked at. It gives advice for finding affordable artist housing (both rent and buy), and also has a lengthy list of artist live/work spaces in Seattle which may or may not have vacancies.
• Artist Trust – Pretty lengthy classifieds list of artist live/work space available (+ lots of other artist resources). A random click-through on entries seems to indicate the information is fairly current, and there’s even one Georgetown artist space for sale.
• Artspace.org – The two artist loft buildings are currently leased up and only taking names on their waitlist, but a new project, Mt Baker Station Lofts, is in the planning stages (PDF) so might be an option in about 2 years.

Then there’s the obvious mainstream routes: Seattle.gov | Looking for Housing, Craigslist.org, SeattleRentals.com, etc. Plus, I thought the advice from the Arts Resource Network was some of the best:

The most promising ways to locate artist live/work space in your home community is to look in art supply stores and cafes, space available postings in weekly newspapers, arts councils, and artist-run organizations.

Anyone have any other suggestions or particularly cunning resources for artists to find live/work space?