Van Buren art center plans renovation campaign

The Center for Art and Education is raising money to renovate and move into two buildings in historic downtown Van Buren that not only will provide more space to expand but help revitalize the downtown area.
The Center for Art and Education is raising money to renovate and move into two buildings in historic downtown Van Buren that not only will provide more space to expand but help revitalize the downtown area.

VAN BUREN -- Officials with the Center for Art and Education say moving the 40-year-old organization onto Main Street will help it better serve the community and give a boost to downtown's revitalization effort.

The art center in Van Buren has been quietly raising money among its patrons to gauge community support for its plans to renovate the old Farmers House Hotel at 415 Main St. and a smaller building next to it into a new art education center and gallery. The project is estimated to cost around $5.4 million.

Center Executive Director Jane Owen said the formal campaign probably will kick off in the spring after the center raises its first $1 million. The center is $300,000 short of that goal, she said.

The center has to raise $2 million to match a $2 million grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

"Once we get the [center's] $2 million, we'll be able to start the restoration of the building itself," she said. "Until then, we'll be out there raising money for it."

Owen hopes construction can start around the end of the year. She said it will then take two to three years before the center is ready to move in. It all depends on how quickly the center can raise the money, she said.

Moving into the new buildings would triple to 13,354 square feet of space the center currently occupies in the century-old St. Michael Catholic Church tucked away in a residential neighborhood at 104 North 13th St. A larger space will allow the center to more easily offer its many programs and branch out into such art forms as theater and music, Owen said.

"It will be a tremendous boost for the art center," said Rusty Myers, vice president of the board of directors. "It will enable them to better serve their clients. Much of what they do has to be done outside the center because of space."

Van Buren Chamber of Commerce board member Debbie Foliart said the center on Main Street will be an economic boost to the area, drawing people who may not normally go downtown and encouraging other businesses or enterprises to move there.

"We're very excited about the Center for Art and Education being on Main Street," she said.

Foliart said the center also would complement the development of Freedom Plaza at the other end of downtown Main Street. Freedom Plaza is a $1.7 million park the city is developing next to the Old Frisco Station. It is scheduled to be completed around the end of March.

The center offers classes and work space for adults, but most of the programs Owen listed were for children: arts and education programs, as well as summer camps to showcase the arts in nine Northwest Arkansas communities through the Crawford County library system, the Boys and Girls Club and the Van Buren school system.

A Van Buren couple, Jim and Carol Williamson, gave the center $100,000 to purchase the two Main Street buildings in 2015, Owen said.

A historic properties survey of Main Street conducted in 1985 said the Farmers House Hotel was built around 1900 as two separate commercial spaces with a central stairway to the second level.

"Although the cast-iron columns on the first floor are original, the storefront is not," the survey said. "After the facade collapsed, it was patched. Unfortunately, as is evident in the condition of the cornice, the craftsmanship was of poor quality."

Myers said the hotel rooms were still in place on the building's second floor.

The survey identified the smaller single-story building next door at 413 Main St. as one that "housed the Post Office from [circa] 1904 until it was moved to 500 Main [circa] 1910."

The building is in bad shape, Owen said. Plans are for the center to gut the two buildings, leaving the facades facing Main Street as required in the historic district. Crews will tear out the interior, stabilize the structures and build in the spaces laid out in plans drawn by Fort Smith architect Galen Hunter.

The preliminary plans Hunter drew up show two galleries on the first floor where the current center has only one, and which is not handicapped accessible. The first floor also will have a cafe, a source of much-needed revenue, offices and storage.

The second floor will have a children's gallery and four classrooms.

"A lot of the spaces will be determined by what activities go in those spaces," she said.

The center also wants to buy the empty lot behind the two Main Street buildings and develop it into a landscaped park and sculpture garden that can host outside events for the center and the community.

Center officials also are working with the city to develop parking behind the city-owned King Opera House next door.

NW News on 02/20/2017

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