Making the Most of Percent-for-Art Requirements: How Developers Meet Branding, Leasing, Wayfinding Needs

Developing major new commercial real estate projects requires art and science to anticipate a market-need years before delivery and navigating complex neighborhood and regulatory hurdles. Atop those challenges, some jurisdictions tack on a percent-for-art spending requirement.

Public art, fueled both by percent-for-art requirements and by project sponsors who voluntarily commission such works, is a key part of the $19 billion in private sector giving to the arts, culture, and humanities, according to the Americans for the Arts’ 2018 survey, its most recent report. Percent for art programs, typically devoting 1 or up to 2 percent of an overall real estate project’s cost into art, are in place for all federal buildings, and required for private development in many U.S. states and in over 100 municipalities nationwide.