As Steve Heck slowly dismantled his work space at the Factory 510, he lamented all of the things he could have created in the sprawling San Leandro warehouse.

Heck, a 56-year-old man who doesn’t like to throw out things, envisioned a massive sculpture made of 60 broken pianos. A lazy Susan-style stage rotating on top of bowling balls.

“Wouldn’t that have been cool?” he asked as he loaded planks of wood onto a dolly Thursday.

After receiving a 30-day notice last month to vacate the Factory co-working space, part of the larger Gate 510 complex housed in a former Plymouth Dodge plant, Heck has put his visions on hold while he struggles to find a new place to create them.

Such is the story for many Bay Area artists who said they’ve faced sudden crackdowns on their workplaces in the month after a fire killed 36 people at the Ghost Ship, a disheveled Oakland warehouse that was cobbled together with makeshift stairs and jury-rigged creations. What is most frustrating, several artists said, is that their spaces do not even remotely resemble the Ghost Ship, yet a “knee-jerk” reaction has affected their ability to run their businesses and pay their bills.

Affordable artist spaces are hard to come by in the Bay Area’s expensive and competitive real-estate market. As a result, artists often flock to shared warehouse spaces, where they can operate their small businesses, free not just from high rents but also from complaints about the noisy, messy business of painting, welding and otherwise making stuff.

The fire sent a jolt of alarm to landlords, fire and safety regulators, and elected officials around the Bay Area and across the country, leading to a rash of evictions and inspections.

Artists at work spaces such as the Gate 510, Oakland’s American Steel Studios, and Bridge Storage and ArtSpace in Richmond said they had to abandon or delay lucrative projects to deal with the dizzying logistics of bringing their spaces up to code or vacating them and finding new digs.

For Tyler Kobick, the expenses of moving out of the Factory 510 — a neatly kept space that is equipped with sprinklers — quickly added up for his small design business.

There was the estimated $1,200 he needed to spend to transport all of the heavy materials to a new space; $500 to reinstall all the equipment; $2,500 for a new overhead door; and his employees’ salaries, $48 to $68 an hour, which they have forgone to help with the move.

“Maybe it’s time to just start throwing things out,” Kobick said as he looked at the hoard of things for which he needs to find a new home by Saturday evening.

Many of the artists’ enclaves in the Bay Area that have received inspections or eviction notices — from legitimate industrial sites to makeshift live-work spaces — were already on the radar of city officials and building managers, and were given ample notice that they needed to be brought up to code.

At the Factory 510, for example, inspectors and managers visited frequently for permitting reasons before the Ghost Ship fire. But after the fire, Factory co-founder Cheryl Edison, the master lease holder, said officials showed up nearly every day, pointing out code violations.

Her temporary lease for the 15,000-square-foot space within the larger 24-acre property was not renewed after Jan. 1, despite an informal agreement she claimed she had with the management to continue there.

Greg Scharlemann, the general manager of SKB, the commercial real estate company that owns the Gate 510, said Edison’s lease was not renewed because the company wanted to transition to long-term leases.

The Factory 510 opened with “promises to change the world for new businesses, artists and entrepreneurs,” according to a news release announcing the space. It was a place where businesses could rent a temporary space to go from an “idea to an established enterprise.”

“Owners can progress at their own pace without the stresses that often come with biting off more than they can chew as they grow,” the release said.

Scharlemann said the Factory was a temporary project, designed to incubate short-term users into long-term tenants, that had run its course. He’s now charging $1.30 to $1.75 per square foot per month for long-term leases. The company offered members of the Factory 510 who were already there long-term leases and some accepted, he said.

One of the members was a nonprofit, and the company is in talks with at least two more members from the Factory 510, he said.

But Edison said the majority of members were given no such offer and were told that they could not stay. Now dozens of members and artists from the Factory 510 are scrambling to find a space that is both affordable and accommodates their needs, she said. The Factory had offered short-term, drop-in memberships as well as larger, dedicated spaces.

There is often not a ton of money for artists in the so-called maker movement, an umbrella term for independent inventors, designers and tinkerers who commonly flock to shared work spaces.

Although it is difficult to quantify the economic impact of the movement on the Bay Area, Dale Dougherty, the founder of the Maker Faire event series, said its adherents’ contributions to society are invaluable.

“They are creating these experiences to make our lives richer; otherwise it’s a world of malls and those kinds of things,” he said. “They shouldn’t be ignored — and if you transition their (artist) space into a completely different space, you’re going to lose those people and their contribution to the city.”

As Heck packed up the last of his things, he spoke of plans to move to a space somewhere in the desert near Reno.

“It’s going to be hard to be an artist in the Bay Area unless you have a lot of money,” he said. “But if you have a lot of money that doesn’t really equate to making art — because then you’re just focused on the money.”

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani