Earlier this week, CHS reported on Velocity Dance’s graceful moves to continue its role in arts culture on Capitol Hill despite soaring rents and high competition for space.

City Arts magazine has a fantastic, optimistic story on another nimble venture that has chiseled out a place for itself on the Hill — Love City Love:

Right now, Capitol Hill activists are racing to establish a foothold of alternative culture before heedless development establishes something else: potentially a generic corridor of ugly architecture and clueless newcomers with no ken of the neighborhood’s artistic bent. Every art gallery, black-box theatre and local-goods retailer, every preserved historic building counterbalances faceless construction and encroaching national chains.

Opening a large urban environment to free form, street-level expression isn’t a new idea. Plenty of people imagine a creative sandbox set inside a beautiful old building in the heart of the city. These things rarely materialize. Space and resources are painfully hard to come by, and the gap between a pipe dream and a signed lease is vast. But the timing, scale and visibility of Love City Love are unprecedented and its execution has been flawless. It’s an of-the-moment reinvention—and it’s working.

Make sure to read the whole thing here.

Jonathan Zwickel also reports that Love City Love is on the hunt for its next Capitol Hill home. We’re looking forward to seeing what comes next.