Sodo Is Home -- Seattle Artists Embrace Sunny Arms, A Co-Op South Of The Dome

WITH ITS SPRAWLING BLOCKS full of faceless factories and warehouses, SoDo, the industrial area south of the Kingdome, is hardly a highlight on the Chamber of Commerce tour. There are no tree-lined boulevards, pastoral parks or carts dispensing espresso. And the closest thing to culture is the Rainier Brewery tour.

But to an intrepid band of artists, SoDo is more than just a place to park before a Seahawks game; SoDo is home. The artists live in the Sunny Arms, a 17-unit cooperative housed in a former shoe factory at 707 South Snoqualmie. The five-story structure was transformed into lofts three years ago, under a city zoning ordinance that permits artists to live and work in industrial areas. The Sunny Arms is unique because most of the residents own their spaces, so they're protected from rising rents and capricious landlords.

The project was the brainchild of Karen Guzak, 52, an artist and former member of the King County Arts Commission and the Metro Transit Tunnel Arts Committee. Guzak and a consortium of fellow artists devoted a year of their lives to transforming this 85-year-old white elephant into an artists' community, negotiating financing, dealing with the city, supervising construction and finding other artists with the capital to purchase and complete their unfinished lofts.

"There's a huge need in this community for artists' space," says Guzak. "A writer needs a desk, a word processor and quiet space. A musician needs a studio and instruments. But for an artist, you need space and you need light. You need a lot of storage, and you need access to suppliers, shippers and fabricators."

Guzak and her husband, insurance broker Jim Newell, occupy 3,200 square feet on the fifth floor of the Sunny Arms (the name was inspired by the old Sunny Jim plant down the street). Architect Patricia Brennan, who designed the building's renovation, worked with Guzak to transform the raw space into a studio and two-bedroom, two-bath apartment.

The floor plan divides the loft diagonally, creating wedge-shaped rooms that are narrow at the core of the space and fan out to embrace the light and views entering through the perimeter windows. Raised floors and dropped ceilings help define living areas within the open plan.

"I wanted to make sure I provided myself with some cozy areas in this big, huge, lofty space," Guzak says.

Entering the loft, you pass under a canopy topped with tumbleweeds and flanked by posts, which were salvaged during the remodel and sculpted with a chainsaw. A divider wall facing the front door forces visitors to turn either left or right. A right turn leads to the studio: a spare, white-walled space crowned with rows of fluorescent lights. The left side of the loft contains the office and living spaces. The old fir floors still bear traces of the yellow lines used to separate stock during the building's incarnation as a paper-box factory.

Guzak wanted her loft to echo the building's industrial heritage. Smitten with the galvanized sheet-metal ducts that snake across the ceiling, she wrapped the material around all her door frames, extending the tops of the casings to form directional arrows. She repeated the material under the loft in the guest bedroom, and in the canopy over the front door. "I like the contrast of the sheet metal with the old fir floors," she says. "And it was kind of funny, too."

Guzak approached the decor the same way she approaches a canvas: filling every square inch with layers of texture, color and detail. "Because I'm here every day - all day and all night, most days - I want enough variety and enough interest to keep me comfortable," she says.

The living spaces are relaxed and homey, full of plants and art - much of it Guzak's. The artist's favorite retreat is the library, a V-shaped space with a cozy couch cradled in its apex. A bookcase crammed with art books lines one wall. The end of the bookcase steps up like a staircase, and Guzak and Newell actually use it like one, scaling its levels to feed the fish in the tank atop the kitchen cabinets.

The furnishings are an eclectic mix: a coffee table crafted from an unsuccessful sculpture base, a trunk picked up for $5 back in the mid-'70s, an English pub table topped with a toy locomotive, and a rug that some musician friends purchased in Russia after learning they couldn't leave the country with the rubles they earned.

In the kitchen, whitewashed oak cabinets frame a copper wall inscribed with abstract designs. The copper is actually old etching plates, which Guzak cleaned, re-inked, and sprayed with a protective layer of lacquer. "The plates are just so beautiful, I've resisted getting rid of them or recycling them," says Guzak. "I've carried a lot of old ones around with me, waiting for a time and place where I could use them."

A trellis affixed to the wall above supports a collection of copper molds and cookware, which Guzak collected on travels to Germany and the Middle East. The 18th-century armoire across the room is a souvenir of Bavaria, as are the beer steins assembled atop an antique cupboard in the master bath.

Guzak combines an affinity for the past with a love of the avant-garde. The two come together in the guest bathroom, where an ornate old mirror hangs over a vanity decorated with an abstract mosaic by artist Linda Beaumont. The creation slithers down the side of the vanity and wraps around the adjacent bathtub, fragments of green tile alternating with stones that Guzak collected on outings in the San Juans. A fire hose uncovered during the renovation hangs from a reel alongside the tub.

Before she moved into the Sunny Arms, Guzak was living and working in a house she built in Madison Valley. "All of the neighbors were wonderful, but I was living alone and working alone, and it was kind of crazy," she says. "I ended up feeling pretty isolated."

Now, visitors drop by regularly to chat, and there's a real sense of community - like an entire neighborhood packed into one city block. The rooftop has been turned into a communal park, with a hot tub and herb garden for the residents to share. There's an annual summer barbecue and a Christmas party, and monthly co-op meetings to discuss business affairs.

Guzak says, "There's a lot of preconceptions about what artists do - that they're flakes and dreamers who can't accomplish much of anything."

If the Sunny Arms project proves anything, it's that artists are capable of doing more than just dreaming. They're capable of turning those dreams into reality.

Seattle writer Fred Albert reports regularly on home design for Pacific, and is co-author of "American Design: The Northwest," published by Bantam. Greg Gilbert is a Seattle Times staff photographer.