Allston-based The Hamilton Co. has submitted preliminary plans to convert a portion of this warehouse at One Westinghouse Plaza in Hyde Park into 63 units of artist live/work space.

With its affordable rental rates and available warehouse space, Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood has become a desirable destination for local artists in recent years, and now a private developer and community-based nonprofit group want to draw even more artists to the area with the creation of additional housing and studios.

The Hamilton Co. of Allston has prepared and submitted preliminary plans to convert a portion of a 120,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial campus known as Westinghouse Plaza into 63 live/work units for artists. Meanwhile, the Southwest Boston Community Development Corp. is searching for sites to create at least 20 live/work units.

“The city has done a lot to promote Hyde Park as an area to develop work space and live space,” said Cheryl Forte, who is active with Fort Point Arts Community Inc. and the Fort Point Cultural Coalition, which has developed artist studios and housing in that section of the city.

The development plans come as the city has been striving to bring more permanent artist studios and housing to all Boston neighborhoods.

In the last four years, 150 new permanent artist live/work spaces have been developed and are now occupied by working artists, said Heidi Burbidge, senior project manager for the Boston Redevelopment Authority Artist Space Initiative.

At least 89 of those units are part of Midway Studios, located in three warehouse buildings at 15 Channel Center St. in Fort Point. The studios, which have been leased to painters, photographers and dancers, were completed last year through a joint venture of Keen Development Corp. and the Fort Point Cultural Coalition.

While Fort Point and the South End have traditionally had heavy concentrations of artists, new artist housing and work space has been popping up throughout Boston, including Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. And the city is hoping to expand housing opportunities for sculptors, musicians and writers in neighborhoods with few artists like Charlestown, Allston-Brighton and Mattapan.

Meanwhile, in Hyde Park, 14 different arts groups are working together as part of the Hyde Park Arts Initiative to promote arts in that neighborhood. As part of that effort, the Southwest Boston Community Development Corp. – a Hyde Park organization that helped get the initiative off the ground – is trying to find an appropriate site to develop artist live/work space.

“I was shocked when I started working here to find out how large the artist community was,” said John Mahony, executive director of the Southwest Boston CDC. “There’s quite a bit of work space but there isn’t a lot of live/work space.”

Mahony said Hyde Park is an attractive location for artists because it has a lot of industrial space, features more affordable rental housing compared to other parts of the city and is accessible by public transportation.

The CDC has seriously considered two sites to redevelop into about 20 artist live/work space units, according to Mahony. But one of the sites – a city-owned property between the Neponset River and the Fairmount commuter rail station that was once home to Lewis Chemical – is so contaminated that preliminary testing has indicated that cleanup costs would be exorbitant and residential development would not be feasible, said Mahony.

Instead, the CDC is contemplating redeveloping the site into a complex of arts-related businesses.

Mahony declined to identify the other site that the CDC is considering for development.

‘The Perfect Type’
While the CDC is searching for the perfect spot for artist housing, The Hamilton Co. is planning to redevelop the top two vacant floors of a 3-story warehouse at One Westinghouse Plaza into 63 for-sale condos for artists.

The Hamilton Co. acquired Westinghouse Plaza, an office, industrial and warehouse park that is located a quarter-mile from the Readville commuter rail station, in 2000.

The first floor of the building that is slated for redevelopment is currently leased and occupied by a custom kitchen cabinet maker and a restaurant equipment supply company, according to Patrick Reardon, a broker who is marketing the property.

The developer wants to create a mix of flats and lofts, with at least 40 of the units providing both live and work space for artists, according to a Web site promoting the development. The second floor will primarily feature residential units with shared working studios. Prices will range from $165,000 to $245,000. Construction is scheduled to start this year.

With its large windows, high ceilings and exposed brick, the building is ideal for an artist living/working community, according to Reardon.

“It’s the perfect type of neighborhood building,” said Reardon.

Currently, there are only six occupied live/work space units in Hyde Park, according to the city. The units, located at 1391 Hyde Park Ave., were developed by Phillip Manker and sold last year for prices ranging from about $144,000 to more than $470,000, according to registry records.

While a plethora of artist live/work space isn’t available in Hyde Park, work studios are scattered throughout the neighborhood. About six years ago, around the time many artists were being displaced because the waterfront buildings they occupied were being sold and redeveloped, First Highland Management & Development Corp. dedicated a part of the Boston/Dedham Commerce Park for artist work space, according to the Southwest Boston CDC’s Mahony.

Today, dancers, musicians, painters and sculptors are settling into new homes in other parts of the city, as well.

In the South End, a ribbon cutting will take place in upcoming months for ArtBlock, which features a mix of market-rate and affordable duplex townhouses and lofts.

Twenty-six units at ArtBlock are being sold as affordable artist live/work space to those earning up to 80 percent of the median income. As part of the project, new work spaces will be created and existing artist studios will be preserved at the nearby Bates Art Resource Center on Harrison Avenue, which was formerly the Bates School.

In Jamaica Plain, a group of artists were able to purchase a former rubber factory where they had rented space for years and convert it into the Brookside artist lots, 24 live/work condos. Artists started moving into the custom-designed condos last year.

And in Roxbury’s Dudley Square, the historic Dartmouth Hotel, which has been restored into a mixed-use property with luxury and affordable apartments, includes eight artist live/work units.

Artists purchasing or renting new units must be certified by a BRA review committee made up of artists. The prospective residents have to demonstrate that they have a recent body of work as an artist, and developers must have deed restrictions or other types of covenants that require occupants of artist units to be certified by the BRA as working artists.

The BRA also has issued specific design guidelines for artist space, including minimum square footage and ventilation and soundproofing specifications.