Rezoning Buildings as Studios?

I hopped into my local auto shop today to get a metal mold welded together - I don't know if all mechanics will do this, but my dad happens to be old friends with the owner, so he was willing to help me out. While I was there I started looking around the shop and realized, "Damn! An old auto shop would make an amazing studio!" And, in fact, I think in my lifetime I have seen quite a few closed down auto shops.

I realized the space is pretty damn large, too large for just a kiln casting studio, even if I was running workshops. So I figured, if anyone was about to start a glass co-op, the building would easily fit a kiln shop, hot shop (glass blowing and hot casting), flameworking, and a cold shop. It would suck to have an open space between everything, because a cold shop is really damn loud, but if everyone cooperates they can pick official cold shop days and times, so that the majority of use, when people are in there for hours, doesn't interrupt everyone else.

When you need some extra ventilation, or the day is just really hot, you could also just throw open those beautiful glass garage doors! Speaking of, glass garage doors would be great for natural light, and amazing to let the public peek in while they're walking by! Now all I need to do is figure out where you'd put a safe zone so the public could come inside and take a gander, and we'd be all set!

A co-op glass studio like this isn't in my future, not as far as I know, but it's still nice to think about it.

Would an auto shop work for anybody else? Would textiles artist's enjoy it, or is something more homey better for that? What other buildings would be amazing if they were rezoned as studios?

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