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MTA takeover puts Factory in Flux

By David Freedlander, amNewYork Staff Writer
More stories | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

December 19, 2007

The "Tower of Babel" by artist Joel Braden Stoehr at the Flux Factory in Long Island City. (Jefferson Siegel / December 18, 2007)

At a converted warehouse on the edge of Queens sits a New York of the imagination. More than a hundred imaginations, actually, one for each of the artists who labored on the massive "New York New York New York" installation that presents a sort of wishful alternative universe to the Robert Moses Panorama at the Queens Museum of Art.

But piece by piece, the artists' dizzying scale-model replica of the city is going to come down and with it the Flux Factory, the warehouse turned art space that houses it, in an eminent-domain takeover by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for its $6.3 billion East Side Access project.

"We love this city, and we think in some small way we've added something to the life of the city," said Morgan Meis, Flux Factory's co-founder and president. "We are the kind of thing the city is always promoting about what makes it so great. But then we lose our space. There is some root hypocrisy there."

Flux Factory began in Williamsburg in 1994 and moved to its present location five years ago to flee the rising rents of Brooklyn. It has grown into one of the city's most beloved art groupse city, sponsoring such off-beat projects as building a monument to the city of Paterson, N.J., marathon group novel-writing, and walking tours of fake street art.

"Our whole thing is about not going out and getting work but creating work out of a collaborative process, and getting people together to create our own little unique world with each project."

They settled in Long Island City in 2002, and signed a 15-year lease only to find out last year that they would be homeless again.

Meis said that the MTA for years failed to communicate its intentions for the site. "They are not interested in an open flow of information. It's unbelievable. They don't see themselves in anyway responsible to the public."

An MTA spokesman denied the allegations and said that site was crucial for its East Side Access project, which would bring a tunnel underneath the East River to connect the Long Island Rail Road with Grand Central Terminal.

"The MTA is in negotiations with the property owner to acquire the site," said the spokesman, Jeremy Soffin, in an email message. "The MTA held a public hearing on February 22, 2007, at which time it clearly detailed the properties being acquired and the intended uses for those properties. Flux Factory, as well as all other affected parties, was advised of the public hearing by mail; the announcement for the hearing was also advertised in the local press."

But Lenny Gartner, the owner of Flux Factory's building, said that the MTA made one, "take-it-or-leave-it" offer.

"This whole thing is done for a bunch of commuters coming in from once section of Long Island into Grand Central," he said. "They have a tremendous amount of space. I don't see why they have to wipe out a whole area."

Devastated Fluxers, meanwhile, are grappling with the idea that home could be no more.

"Flux Factory is one of those special places in the city because it builds the kind community of artists and thinkers that is so hard to have in this town," said Mikey Barrington,23, a member of the group for a year and half. "It's the kind of place that you picture what being an artist in New York would be like."