Rarely, in New York City, do you hear stories about tenants getting along with their landlords. But Victor Jeffreys II — a 41-year-old artist who has been living in the same apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for nearly 20 years — got lucky.
For years, the ground floor of his building was occupied by a Santander bank, which vacated the space late last year. During a casual conversation with his building manager, the topic of the empty retail area came up. The building manager told him he didn’t know what to do with the empty space while he was looking for a new tenant, said Mr. Jeffreys, who quickly asked if he could use it as a studio.
The building manager agreed, in an unofficial capacity. “He was like, ‘I’m not going to give you a key, but I’ll show you how to get in, you can do whatever you want, but you can’t have other people in here,’” Mr. Jeffreys said.
For about two months, he proceeded to “break in” and use the space to make art. “Breaking in required me getting on all fours and crawling through a hole in a wall each time I wanted to get into the space,” he said.
In June, he and his building manager made it official: For $1 a month, Mr. Jeffreys was granted permission to use the space. He also got a key, so he no longer had to burgle his own studio. That meant he could get insurance, so he could open the space to the public.
Now it has turned into a sort of art-centric community center. Children walking by with their parents often stop in to doodle alongside Mr. Jeffreys, and last month he held an opening event.
The unusual arrangement is a stopgap solution to a commercial real estate crisis that began during the early years of the pandemic: empty storefronts.
In April, the city’s Committee on Small Business discussed the problem of increasing commercial vacancies. About 11.2 percent of storefronts are vacant across the city, barely an improvement from the pandemic peak of 11.3 percent, said Councilman Oswald Feliz, a Democrat from the Bronx who is the committee’s chair. In 2007, Mr. Feliz pointed out, only 4 percent of storefronts citywide were vacant.
The former bank space Mr. Jeffreys is using has already been shown to a handful of prospective retail tenants in the past few months, he said, adding: “I am so, so, so fortunate to have this opportunity. I try to make the most of it every day, because I know it could disappear at a moment’s notice.” (His building manager, David Alani, did not respond to requests for comment.)
From the sidewalk, a hand-painted sign that reads “not prime retail for lease” is visible through the studio’s window. The building manager asked Mr. Jeffreys to paint that sign, and now “not prime retail” has become the unofficial name of the space.
According to the listing on the commercial real estate site Ripco, the space is around 4,000 square feet. Inside, vestiges of the bank branch remain: Some overhead lights are always on, the safe deposit boxes remain in place, and there are holes in the wall where the A.T.M.s used to be.
Art supplies and miscellaneous pieces of furniture that neighbors and friends donated to Mr. Jeffreys are scattered around. The walls are covered with his paintings: portraits of friends and acquaintances, including the performance artist Crackhead Barney, the actor Jeremy Pope and “a guy I met on Grindr in Barcelona.”
Greenpoint, which used to be a hub for Polish immigrants, has morphed into one of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods. In recent years, luxury condo towers have been built on the waterfront, the fratty bar Ray’s opened its second outpost there, and minimalist coffee shops have popped up.
On Manhattan Avenue, a thoroughfare that connects most of the neighborhood, including the empty bank, the average asking price per square foot for retail space was $67 in the second half of last year, according to the Real Estate Board of New York. That’s lower than the average price in many surrounding neighborhoods, but much higher than Mr. Jeffreys’s $1-a-month deal.
For visitors, his “not prime retail” has been a welcome addition to the neighborhood. Recently, he told a family passing by, “You should come make art some time.” The parents brought their children back the next day, and they painted with Mr. Jeffreys.
While that was happening, “another little girl comes barreling in, and she’s like, ‘I need to make art!’” he said. She sat down and joined the other children painting, and he still has some of their works in the studio.
Lori Huneke, 55, who works in real estate private equity, attended the studio’s opening night last month and contributed supplies, including trash bags and hooks. “Victor and his landlords are a positive example of what can be done with New York real estate,” said Ms. Huneke, who lives on the Upper East Side.
Rafael de Moura and Ana Delicado Bryant, who are in their 30s and live in Greenpoint, were walking by the former bank late one night. “It drew my attention that the sign of Santander was no longer there, so I — as gossipy as I am — leaned over the glass of the old branch and started staring at what happened to be a guy painting over a huge canvas,” Ms. Delicado Bryant said.
It was, of course, Mr. Jeffreys, who “smiled and with a gesture invited us in,” she said.
The meeting was particularly moving for her and Mr. de Moura because they work for Santander. They bought three of Mr. Jeffreys’s drawings and one of his portraits.
“New York is heavily moved by money. Banks are the intermediaries,” Mr. de Moura said. But Mr. Jeffreys was able to “transform a place that is the symbol of rigidness, of stiffness, into the opposite with donations from neighbors, kids visiting, and his own imagination and openness.”