Q. We're at the Arts At Marks Garage, where there's a lot of moaning and groaning and banging in the background of the 4,800-square-foot space.

A. We have a gallery and also a performance space, where there's a rehearsal going on for the Hawai'i Theatre for Youth for their upcoming show, "Sport." We have rehearsals and performances here from either our partner organizations or other community members. We have 10 resident partners and provide them with office space and office equipment to share, as well as provide artists with a venue to present new work or to present performances.

Q. You were born and raised in the Midwest but have family roots on O'ahu.

A. My parents, Wayne and Jean Takeshita, graduated from Farrington High School in 1957, went to the University of Hawai'i and moved to the Mainland in 1962 on a five-year plan to travel. They ended up in Minnesota, where I was born. Most all of my other relatives stayed here on O'ahu — two grandmothers, who are 97 and 94, most of my aunts and uncles, and all of my cousins. I'm the katonk (Japanese-American from the Mainland).

Q. What drew you to this job?

A. For me, this is a perfect fit. When I went back to graduate school at Harvard, I wanted to build a career around arts-based community development. The work of the Hawai'i Arts Alliance and the Arts At Marks Garage is truly a national model. We are one of seven organizations funded by the Ford Foundation in something called the Shifting Sands Initiative that is using art as community development.

While you're redeveloping and transforming a community, you're also being mindful of unintended consequences and being mindful of both sides of that double-edged sword. My goal is not to change what's been happening. To me, they've been doing a great job. It's about taking that work to the next level. How can we deepen and strengthen our community ties? How can we improve the reach and the scope of our work, be it in the arts community or be it in our surrounding geographic community? How can we think more broadly about other types of partnerships?

Q. Artists and partner organizations pay rent here. But what's your relationship with the various businesses and residents that surround the Arts At Marks Garage?

A. When we first started about five years ago, there were two, maybe three other arts-related businesses in the area. Now there's closer to 30 or 40, depending on how you count. We work to bring those people together for group promotions and working together, while being mindful of the danger of us gentrifying and replacing the vitality that already exists here, primarily in Chinatown. We want to make the residents and businesses benefit. We have a map that lists all of the galleries but also all of the different restaurants that are here in the downtown/Chinatown area, from Alakea to River Street and from Nimitz to Beretania. It's a way of promoting small businesses. We're trying to really figure out how to capture the 50,000 people who work downtown to spend more time on this side of Fort Street Mall.

We're also trying to bring arts activity to neighborhood residents through First Fridays In the Park, where we do hands-on arts activities at Smith-Beretania Park. We're also doing a show in January called "Shelter," through the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, which is offering free drama classes for neighborhood residents, targeting the affordable towers in Chinatown. The kids are going to put on a production here at Marks around the issue of shelter.