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After much negotiation, the planning commission, prodded by Mayor John Lindsay, came to a compromise agreement last January. It legalized the residential use of about 1,000 lofts in SoHo, provided the lofts were less than 3,600 sq. ft. in area. "Simply legalizing artists' tenancy in the area," the commission felt, "would drive up rents and force industry out, with the consequent loss of jobs." The CPC set up a certification committee to decide who is, and who is not, an artist. The committee has been the butt of much criticism, particularly from artists who are not involved with the SoHo Artists' Association. Says Sculptor Don Judd, who owns an iron-front warehouse on Spring Street: "It is a threat, at least an insult, though possibly harmless since its operations seem unenforceable. Legalization won't mean much. You can't turn an area into an occupational ghetto. You can't say who is and isn't an artist. You can't throw citizens out. And none of this does anything about the problem of rising rents."
No Rip-Offs. If there is one constant theme when artists talk about SoHo, it is simply that they want to be left alone. It is one of the few remaining areas of Manhattan where there is a real symbiosis between groups and occupations. Everything that is needed to outfit a studio, do up a loft or make an electronic sculpture lies within a few blocks, among the tool-rental businesses of Greene Street, the lumberyards of Spring and Wooster, the hardware stores on West Broadway, and the bazaars of secondhand circuitry, gadgets and plastics that line Canal Street. It would be easy, and foolish, to sentimentalize SoHo into a kind of American Montparnasse, full of jolly creative gnomes secreting art and sharing the chili. The fact is that life there is, in general, considerably more agreeable than in Greenwich Village. Paradoxically, this is because SoHo is not officially residential. The very lack of amenities, like child-care centers, nursery schools and parks, has promoted a spirit of cooperation among its denizens, a spirit that began leaking from the Village long ago. The rate of street crime is very low—because, some artists maintain, the district overlaps into Little Italy, and the Mafia does not like petty rip-offs in its own backyard.