Background

The Bakehouse Art Complex was set in motion in the mid-1980s by artists who, with support from the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County’s Community Development Block Grant programs, acquired a 33,000 square-foot former Art Deco-era industrial bakery (built 1926) situated on a 2.3-acre parcel (96K sq. ft footprint) in the then-blighted neighborhood of Wynwood. Their aim was to protect artists from future real estate booms and gentrification by acquiring their own site and providing affordable spaces for artists.

The Bakehouse’s existing 33,000 square-foot historic building comprises approximately 60 artist studios of varying sizes, two galleries, a classroom, print room, photo lab, ceramics facilities, woodworking and welding areas. These spaces and amenities, most unavailable outside of the universities, have enabled over the years thousands of resident and non-resident artists to work, make, discover, learn, and share their work and practices with each other and the broader community. Bakehouse is the largest artist-purposed, non-profit-owned site of its kind and size in Miami’s urban core.

Bakehouse’s campus is located in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the heart of Miami’s developing urban core (roughly defined by NW 29 to 36 Street, North Miami Avenue to NW 6 Avenue). It is bordered on the north by the successful Miami Design District, on the south by the popular and internationally recognized Wynwood Arts District, on the east by Midtown, and on the west by the emerging neighborhood of Allapattah. Together, these neighborhoods are home to new  mixed-use development projects, galleries, and established arts institutions, including the Margulies Collection, Rubell Museum, Espacio 23, Institute of Contemporary Art, De la Cruz Collection, YoungArts, and Perez Art Museum Miami, among others. The neighborhood features numerous public schools and parks, and serves as a hub for Miami’s start-up and tech communities and Miami’s public transportation network. 

Bakehouse benefits from its location in Miami’s urban core: the epicenter of both advantages and challenges resulting from Miami’s rapid transformation in recent years. It is located in the Wynwood Norte neighborhood.

In recent years, this area has seen turnover in real estate ownership and speculative investment. In 2018, Bakehouse, along with other neighborhood stakeholders – long-term and recent – formed the Wynwood Community Enhancement Association (WCEA) to begin to address the economic decline of the neighborhood, its housing stock, and infrastructure. 

Between 2018 and 2020, the WCEA spearheaded a three-year community-driven and community-engaged planning process. The resulting Wynwood Norte Community Vision Plan was adopted and then codified in 2021 by the City of Miami Commission as the Wynwood Norte Neighborhood Revitalization District (NRD-2). While paving the way for investment in the neighborhood, the NRD-2 outlines land uses and other incentives and disincentives unique to Wynwood Norte, such as incentivizing affordability and new mixed-income housing, mitigating displacement, and maintaining the mostly residential character of the neighborhood. It also incentivizes micro-retail and hyper-local business development, such as sole-proprietor artists and arts-related entrepreneurs, and the investment in and expansion of cultural, educational, and recreational facilities.

As the fifth largest landowner in the neighborhood, Bakehouse is prepared to play an important part in the community’s positive transition and revitalization, enhancing the role of arts and culture and providing new housing options within the neighborhood