CAST
Model & Strategy
Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST) is a nonprofit real estate development and holding company that creates affordable – below-market rate – workspace for artists and arts organizations in San Francisco. CAST brings together technical assistance, real estate expertise and innovative financial vehicles that are used to secure permanent spaces in urban city centers for small and mid-sized community arts and culture organizations. In doing so, CAST provides the time and space for critical arts and culture organizations to develop the financial capacity and stability to ultimately purchase their own space.
Moy Eng is a 30-year veteran in the nonprofit sector working as a senior executive, management consultant and grantmaker in arts and culture, international human rights, immigrant rights, lesbian and gay rights and domestic and international renewable energy policy. In addition to CAST, from the mid-1990s through the 2000s, Moy led efforts to invest:
-$2M to commission landmark studies on the state of arts education in California by SRI which helped to secure $800M in new state funding for arts education
-$20M for the creation of over 750,000 square feet in new permanent arts spaces across Bay Area such as ODC, Freight and Salvage, Los Cenzontles, East Bay Performing Arts Center and Tannery Arts Center.
Moy was also recipient of the 2009 Premier Dream Catcher award from the San Francisco Unified School District, California Arts Council Director’s Award, and 2013 American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley Class XXV.
IMPACT
CAST provides a game-changing strategy that puts a permanent stop to San Francisco and Oakland’s loss of cultural assets in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the US. To date, CAST purchased and opened two buildings in central San Francisco, which house two contemporary arts organizations serving ~95,000 people yearly. There are presently three additional arts facility projects in the development pipeline, totaling over 100,000 square feet in San Francisco and Oakland.
CAST launched Culture Compass, an online dynamic city-wide map of cultural facilities as a tool for CAST, urban planners, policymakers, and institutional and individual funders of cultural facilities.
CAST has been cited as a model by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, World Cities Cultural Forum, and by civic and cultural leaders in Amsterdam, Austin, Denver, Paris, Seattle, Sydney, and Vancouver, among many others. In February 2019, the city of London launched its Creative Land Trust, a loan fund modeled after CAST for artists and creative enterprises to acquire workspaces.
