The last time we heard from Rocco Landesman, the plucky chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, he was pissing people off. In editorials and at conferences, the former Broadway producer made the case for "decreasing the supply" of nonprofit arts organizations. Now, Landesman has established a new initiative that may do the opposite: it aims to promote the best new local arts projects across the country in an unprecedented collaboration amongst foundations, corporations, and federal agencies.

The initiative, called ArtPlace, is most easily understood as a venture capital firm that provides seed money to nonprofit arts organizations instead of tech start-ups. The goal is simple: use the arts to enliven communities and spur economic growth. The method is part WPA, part venture capital: ArtPlace will fund projects that incorporate artists and arts groups into local efforts to improve transportation, housing, community development and job creation. What you get, then, are projects like these: the renovation of a vacant Harlem school into a home for 90 artists and their families, or the redevelopment of a rundown city block in Detroit complete with a new music center, pedestrian greenways, and improved museum space.

Conceived a year ago by Landesman and Luis A. Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, ArtPlace has selected 34 projects to date, with another round of applications due in November. The average grant is approximately $350,000, according to a report in the New York Times. In total, projects will receive $11.5 million in grants from participating foundations and another $12 million in loans from corporations. The loans will be financed through the private sector but coordinated in part by federal agencies, according to the report.

Six months ago, Landesman's rhetoric focused on the negative: "There are 5.7 million arts workers in this country and two million artists. Do we need three administrators for every artist?" he asked in an editorial published on the NEA's website. That argument — that there is too little demand for the arts to merit the current supply of arts organizations — caused many to fear that the NEA would let small organizations die in favor of larger, more established institutions. (Landesman has always denied that interpretation, writing, "We should never talk about survival of the largest; we are here to ensure the survival of the most creative and most dynamic.")

ArtPlace is not exactly a reversal of Landesman's survival-of-the-fittest philosophy, but an extension of it. The projects supported by ArtPlace are few, selected by an independent review board following a request for proposals. To be chosen, a project must already have strong local support and a development strategy that will attract public and private dollars beyond ArtPlace's donation.

Another winning proposal, for example, aims to redevelop four downtown acres in the Yerba Buena, Tenderloin, and Market districts of San Francisco, converting properties like the old San Francisco Chronicle building, parking lots, and vacant warehouses into film and digital media businesses, artists' workshops, and cultural event spaces, according to the Times. The project is being executed by a local real estate developer in partnership with Intersection Arts, an alternative nonprofit space.

The list of institutions involved with ArtPlace is staggering. Foundations include the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the James L. Knight Foundation, among others. Federal partners besides the NEA include Heath and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, Transportation, and others. A $12 million loan fund is being supplied by Bank of America, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Chase, MetLife, and Morgan Stanley. Let's just hope all that bureaucracy doesn't get in the way of the winning projects getting their work done. As Landesman well knows, a crowded landscape and an overabundance of suppliers can sometimes lead to trouble.