In 2012, Creative Santa Fe and its partners, the City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe University of Art and Design, hosted Artspace Projects, Inc. from Minneapolis, MN, for a series of meetings in Santa Fe. Nearly 200 community members participated in the meetings.

The purpose of Artspace’s visit was to begin a Community Needs and Use Assessment in Santa Fe to determine if there is a need for affordable cultural spaces for artists and creative workers.

Based on the results of the Needs and Use Assessment, Creative Santa Fe and its partners Artspace and the City of Santa Fe completed an Artists and Creative Workers Survey in the summer of 2013. The survey results are available here.

In early 2014, the City of Santa Fe passed a resolution for the Arts + Creativity Center and received a match grant to help in the next phase. A call for proposals was put out for local developers, and in July of 2014 a local developer for the Arts + Creativity Center was selected.