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Leigh Ann Maddox, an ex-nurse and mostly self-taught painter, didn’t need to agonize over her search for an artistic home.

“Since Circa opened [five years ago], it’s always been a hot spot for art,” she says, referring to the cluster of businesses around Circa 1857 at 1857 Government St. She opened The Funky Palette, an art gallery/studio in the Circa complex, in October, and she’s had a steady stream of walk-in traffic without the benefit of advertising. “All you have to do is say ‘Circa.’ It was not a hard decision for me.”

There are now 11 businesses at Circa, mostly selling different kinds of art, although a café, salon and massage therapist are also on the premises. Circa manager, co-owner and resident artist Sally Conklin says the galleries feed off each other without cannibalizing each other’s customers.

“The more art you have [in one place], the more you can sell. It’s not competition,” Conklin says. It’s that philosophy as much as anything that drives what the Mid City Merchants association calls the Mid City Art & Design District, which includes businesses on and near Government Street from Jefferson Highway to South 14th Street.

“I send people to other places [in Mid City] all the time,” Conklin says. “If we don’t have what they want, I want them to find what they want, and I want them to come back to the area.”

Thirty-one businesses in the area participated in the 10th annual White Light Night art hop on Nov. 16. More than two dozen galleries and antique shops and several non-art-related businesses displayed works by local artists; even Ragusa’s Automotive got into the spirit, displaying the metal and oil work of Tammy Frazier Johnston.

The biggest crowd was at Circa, forcing many visitors to park blocks away, but a steady stream of visitors could be seen at each stop. Transportation was provided to carry people along the route, although it’s unclear how much of the throng actually took advantage, judging by the number of cars creeping along the right-hand lanes going both ways along Government.

“It introduces a lot of people to this area that may have been through it on their way somewhere else but never really stopped,” says Mary Ann Caffery of the Caffery Gallery. She says “tons” of people who couldn’t make it to all 31 stops have been coming by her gallery in the days after the event.

Liz Walker, owner of the Elizabethan Gallery near Government and Jefferson and a longtime Merchants Association board member, was one of the first to draw attention to the area’s high concentration of art- and design-related businesses. About 15 years ago, she went to the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge to find out how to apply for some sort of official recognition, only to find out that an official “arts district” designation didn’t exist. So with the council’s blessing, the area’s merchants started calling themselves an art and design district.

But this year, Act 298 of the Legislature gave local governments the option of establishing their own “cultural products district.” The details of how the program would work haven’t been decided, but it allows businesses within such a district to sell original art without charging sales tax, and owners of older buildings inside the district to receive tax credits for rehabilitating those structures. The state Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism will have the authority to decide if a district fits the intent of the law.

On Nov. 27, the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism held the first of five public meetings to gather input from artists, business owners and economic development organizations on how the department should organize the cultural districts. The department plans to publish a draft set of rules for the districts in December, with the final version expected to be approved and published in April.

The Mid City art merchants will need the city’s support to achieve the state’s designation. Walker says that, at times, Mid City seems to get neglected by city leaders.

“It appears the only arts district the city really wants is downtown,” Walker says. “That’s what we’ve fought for, to try and get recognition for Mid City.”

There have been victories along the way. Walker says Mid City Merchants worked for five years to establish an overlay district that sets design standards that are intended to make the area more pedestrian-friendly. She says the Metro Council watered down the standards, but “it’s a start.”

The merchants association has started a fund, which Walker says contains between $5,000 and $6,000 so far, for public art in Mid City. Walker says she’d like to commission a work and place it somewhere prominent to let people know they’re entering an arts district, but doesn’t know how to go about it.

The Arts Council has a committee for public art that met for the first time in September. Council CEO Derek Gordon says the committee’s top priorities are trying to bring public art to downtown and trying to make a work of public art part of the renovations for the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport. But he stressed the committee isn’t excluding Mid City, and it wants to see as much public art as possible throughout the city.

“Business leaders in the community are recognizing what’s required for the community to make that next leap,” Gordon says. “(The arts) are part of the collateral this community has to attract people. Arts have got to be part of Baton Rouge’s package.”

Before Caffery founded Caffery Gallery in 1989, she drove around the city and decided Government Street had the right mix of businesses and customers. “I didn’t do market research or anything. It just felt like the right place to be.”

It might be nice if Government Street was more walkable, but people might just drive the district anyway, she says. “I don’t see Baton Rouge as a pedestrian city. That’s not really the nature of Baton Rouge in general.” A shortage of parking can be an issue, Caffery says.

Ceramics artist Fairleigh Cook graduated from LSU in 2000 and has lived in Asheville, N.C. and New Orleans. She returned to Baton Rouge primarily looking for studio space, but Cook and studio mate T.J. Black figured it made sense to have a gallery to display their work; 3774 Studio Gallery had its first opening Sept. 21.

“If you’re selling your own work, you keep more of the profit,” Cook says.

That it isn’t practical to walk the length of the arts district isn’t really a problem, Cook says. There are isolated sections where people can visit several places on foot, like the Jefferson end and the area immediately around Circa, she says. Besides, people drive to shop Magazine Street in New Orleans, she says, and that hasn’t hurt the success of its numerous galleries and studios.

The Government Street arts district works partly because its real estate is (relatively) cheap and it’s reasonably close to downtown, the college campuses and artsy neighborhoods like the Garden District, she says. The Baton Rouge arts scene in general is becoming more organized and collaborative, she says, and the Mid City arts district reflects that spirit.

“[The artists] are part of something,” Cook says. “They’re not so out there on their own starting a new business.”