How A 'Robin Hood' Business Model Supports An Artistic Clubhouse In Tribeca

Robin Sokoloff wears many hats: dancer, choreographer, lighting designer, construction worker, activist and producer are some of them. The founder and Executive Director of the artistic hub Loft227 recently signed a lease on a 9,000-square-foot storefront facility in Tribeca. Located at 221 West Broadway, this space is now known as Town Stages, a new female-driven cultural institution and event venue that functions as a for-profit with a not-for-profit arm.

Sokoloff hosts CWE’s 60 Labor Unions, Education & Community Partners at Town Stages

Town Stages owner Robin Sokoloff, herself a graduate of CWE’s partner programs Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), discusses how NEW helped her pair their apprenticeship training program and her love of performing arts to build a brick and mortar cultural arts space in downtown Manhattan.

Space, the Final Frontier: Sokoloff Is On To Something Big

Robin Sokoloff doesn’t wait. The NYC-based executive director-dancer-choreographer-producer needed a space for her own performances and for those of her friends — many of them women and minorities. She has built not one, but two venues, utilized by thousands of people in the arts. And with her second space, she may be on the verge of redefining the business model for creating new work.

Town Stages Opens in New York City

NEW YORK CITY: Town Stages has opened in the neighborhood of Tribeca in lower Manhattan. The new 9,000-square-foot storefront facility includes a mainstage theatre, a cabaret lounge, and a multi-use event space.

This flexible performance and event space is led by a female-driven team, spearheaded by executive director Robin Sokoloff. The new venue is an extension of Sokoloff’s  Loft227, a creative space in midtown Manhattan that served local artists and innovators for the past five years.

Interview: Robin Sokoloff, Executive Director of Town Stages

Please tell us about Town Stages. What makes your venue unique?

Town Stages is a brand new performance and event venue in Tribeca. We provide iconic space and production resources for galas, corporate gatherings, film/photography shoots, fashion shows, screenings, workshops, networking functions, family celebrations, theater and dance. Offering flexible stages and an elegant event space, TOWN supports the entire lifecycle of New York’s hallmark industries, from inception to execution. We have room for up to 225 Guests.

What makes us unique? Town Stages is a successful woman-owned and women-led enterprise in the most competitive city in the world. My team and I are dedicated to sharing your story, and celebrating your success. Whether you are pitching investors or launching your fashion line, we are here to put on your show.

Ladies Who Launch #9: Robin Sokoloff of Town Stages

Who was responsible for the vision behind this beautiful, welcoming, and carefully-curated space, that clearly operates with absolute intention? Meet: Robin Sokoloff. The venue was a new space called Town Stages and as soon as I stepped inside, I couldn't WAIT to tell others about it.

The beautiful architecture and lighting struck me immediately, followed by a zillion thoughts of how many different ways organizations would use the space. Bar in the front, salons, galleries and performance spaces in the back, private bars and dressing rooms downstairs, stunning green subway tile in the CLEAN bathrooms, an accessible elevator, friendly staff, delicious cocktails, and so much more. I was very impressed.

Over the next few weeks, as we began marketing work on the show and spending more time at the venue, I got to learn a little bit about the female-led team and was so inspired by their passion, hard work, and complete support of our fun and gritty musical.

Reclaiming the Right of Public Assembly

Town Stages is taking local action into its own hands to reclaim space for New Yorkers. In a city where more than 20% of storefronts lay empty (30% in Manhattan), the 10,000 square foot event venue and cultural arts space in Tribeca, with a storefront at 221 West Broadway, is implementing a business plan that they believe is a concrete way to affect change. “We’re reimagining equity and access,” says Executive Director and Founder Robin Sokoloff.

Sokoloff Arts Creative Fellowship 2019

Town Stages announces the Sokoloff Arts Creative Fellowship 2019 for artists, entrepreneurs, writers, content creators, movers, shakers, and makers of all kinds.. Applications for Creative Fellowships are accepted on a rolling basis and a new class of Fellows is announced for each new calendar year. To be eligible for the 2019 Creative Fellowship, please apply by October 15, 2018. The application is available at www.sokoloffarts.org/fellowship.

Infinite Body’s Eva Yaa Asantewaa Talks Shop With Robin Sokoloff

Bessie Award Winning Choregrapher (2017), acclaimed writer, and now Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney Dance visits Town Stages with the founding team during its early-stage renovations. “Law of averages”, Sokoloff explains, “very few dancers have a voice. They are bodies moving on stage. They’re in the background. I had a lot I wanted to say, a lot I wanted to change, a lot I wanted to do. I knew if I just kept dancing, there’d be no way to elevate all of this. I’m creating space for myself and my fellow dancers, but my vision and goals and activism are so much bigger than that. I’ve got to be louder than my body enables me to be and be on a bigger platform and a bigger stage.”

Musical Theatre Factory Presents HIGH 5

Shakina Nayfack’s MTF has come a long way in the five years since they were born in the back of a porn studio. From flying the coop and wandering the mean streets of New York, to finding their current home as a resident company of Playwrights Horizons, MTF has continued to serve musical theatre artists by creating spaces to collaborate outside the pressures of critical and commercial success. Their work dismantles oppressive ideologies towards collective liberation - through powerful and joyful story in song. To celebrate this growth the gala held at Town Stages will be night filled with dance and song honoring Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and introducing the inaugural MTF Makers Cohort with work & performances by Troy Anthony (The River is Me), Jacob Jarrett (Wonder Boy), Melissa Li & Kit Yan (Interstate), Jillian Walker (SkinFolk: An American Show), AriDy Nox (Flawless Feminism) and Brandon Webster (Medicine for Melancholy), andJonathan Larson Award winners Tidtaya Sinutoke and Straight White Men alum Ty Defoe (Clouds Are Pillows for the Moon).

Sokoloff & Critics Rip Garment District Alteration Plan To Boot Fashion Workers From Midtown

The city is proposing to revise the zoning framework of the Garment District, which has seen a steady drop in manufacturing availability and a spike in hotel developments. However, many of the area’s remaining workers and business owners are finding the city’s approach to be rushed and flawed.

During a Community Board 5 (CB5) presentation on Wed., March 22, the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), alongside the Department of City Planning, presented a proposal for reworking the Garment District’s zoning. The special section of Midtown Manhattan is bordered roughly by W. 35th and 40th Sts., and Broadway and Ninth Ave. The Garment District’s current zoning allows for building types categorized as manufacturing space, commercial use, residential, or mixed-use.

Town Stages Introduces Board Of Directors

Town Stages introduces its Board of Directors to expand its efforts to foster the future by reimagining equity and access in New York City spaces. Candice Fortin, Nancy Tarantola, Destinee Rae, Preet Gill Esq., Edward Rice, Kiera Doyle, Michael Kushner, Humberto Grueiro, Scott Sokoloff, Samantha Slater, Dr. Lenny Rosenblum, and Isaac Klein join together to represent one of the largest cultural arts spaces to be independently built, operated, and women-led in Manhattan is over 30 years.

Robin Sokoloff Speaks Up At The Strand Bookstore Landmark Hearing

In a emotional and sometimes combative second hearing before the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, the owner of the iconic Strand Bookstore, Nancy Bass Wyden, continued her effort to keep the famed bookseller’s building from being designated a city landmark along with seven other buildings on Broadway between East 12th and 14th Streets.

Appearing with Alexander Urbelis, a former United States Deputy Attorney, Wyden offered the commission to put in place a historic preservation easement on the storefront. The easement would be the an agreement between the property’s owner and a third-party nonprofit group that would serve as a steward for the building’s preservation, assuring that, the building’s facade, would be properly preserved to the rules
At the first LPC hearing, the Strand’s team voiced strong concerns that a historic designation would place unfair restrictions on the last of its kind business and potentially threaten its future.