Arts at the Armory leadership issues open letter, circulates petition and prepares for August 15 community meeting

On August 12, 2023, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

On Tuesday, August 15 from 7-9pm, the Center for Arts at the Armory will be hosting a community meeting during which we will:

share our perspective on the City of Somerville’s “Armory Master Plan Process”
educate our audience about our non-profit arts organization
and provide opportunities for attendees to speak, ask questions, and have the meeting recording and this petition delivered to City government.

This meeting will be held in the Performance Hall and will also be streamed live via Zoom (with support of Somerville Media Center). By participating in the meeting, you are giving your consent to be recorded. You can find the Zoom link and other meeting details below. The meeting will have closed captioning, and Spanish and Portuguese language interpretation available. La reunión tendrá interpretación en español para quien lo necesite. If interpretation is needed in another language in addition to Spanish, please send an email to info@artsatthearmory.org and we will do our best to provide it. Join us in support of our future, and our mission to serve artists, cultural workers and our community.

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Dear members of our community,

The Center for Arts at the Armory, along with our fellow building tenants, received a first look at the City of Somerville’s “Armory Master Plan” on June 29, 2023 after a year of patiently waiting while the City-hired consultant group, Create Today (based in New York), went through their process. The “Armory Master Plan” began approximately one year after the historic Armory building was acquired by the City through eminent domain. Spearheaded by former Mayor Joseph Curtatone and former OSPCD Director George Proakis, and backed by the Somerville City Council, the public as well as the building tenants were assured that the City’s acquisition of the building was to “preserve the arts in the City of Somerville.” In a posted article on the City of Somerville’s website on May 14, 2021, Ward 5 City Councilor Mark Niedergang states, “The Armory is one of the most important places in Somerville for community events and gatherings of all kinds and, of course, for arts programming. Losing the Armory as a community space and a center for the arts would be a devastating blow to culture and public life in Somerville. I look forward to the Armory and the Center for Arts at the Armory thriving even more than they have in the past with financial support from the City.”

Established in 2008 as an independent 501c3 non profit organization, the Center for Arts at the Armory – at the time of building acquisition of 2021 – had a thirteen year tenure as the “anchor tenant” in the Armory building, leasing the Performance Hall and the Cafe (as well as other spaces in the building at different times). After making it through the pandemic, which crushed many arts organizations, the rent structure to keep these spaces had become untenable. As we slowly emerged from the pandemic and with the hope of preserving the arts uses of our spaces under City ownership, the Center for Arts at the Armory applied for and received a grant from the Cabot Family Charitable Trust. We spent a year interviewing various members of the Somerville and Greater Boston arts communities, and our users of our spaces to learn how we could improve our facilities and our programming to best serve diverse needs. In good faith, we provided this research and final report to the City of Somerville’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, the Mayor’s office and the Somerville Arts Council. Upon completion of the research, we began making aesthetic and functional upgrades to the Performance Hall, and began to prepare for a larger capital improvement project while also building an extensive strategic and operational business model for our organization.

Since the acquisition in May of 2021, the Center for Arts at the Armory has thrived despite many obstacles, including not having a long term lease, as the City officials who had spearheaded the acquisition left their respective posts mere months after it being finalized. In the interim, there was lack of building management and maintenance, poor communication, and an imposed high rent in all of our spaces (we have been asked to pay the same rent for all of our spaces that we had previously been paying under private building ownership).

The Center for Arts at the Armory’s mission is to provide an inclusive and accessible venue that creates opportunities for artists and cultural workers, brings diverse audiences together, enriches and transforms lives, and promotes the creative economy. We honor and serve our community every day. In just the two years since this transition of ownership began, the Center for Arts at the Armory has followed through on our promises to our community. We have served hundreds of thousands of community members through our programming and made our spaces even more accessible to the arts community. Between March 2022 and March 2023, we hosted 559 events in our spaces which have celebrated the vibrant diversity of our community. We have hosted dance and theatrical performances, musical concerts, various markets (our own Somerville Winters Farmers Market being the largest), nonprofit and for-profit community meetings, aerial circuses, wrestling events, orchestras, art festivals, storytelling, spoken word and poetry, art exhibitions, film festivals, fencing competitions, weddings, bar- and bat-mitzvahs, comedy groups and children’s groups. We have created ways to offer our spaces for low cost or no cost. We have partnered with community organizations and local promoters, and have fostered these relationships to provide more diverse programming to the public. In the face of many challenges, the Center for Arts at the Armory has grown over the last two years. In May 2021, all of our staff were part time or volunteers. We now have seven full-time staff members and 19 part-time staff, and have regained financial stability.

On June 29 of 2023, Create Today gave the Armory tenants a preview of what they had presented to the City of Somerville for the “Armory Master Plan” and this information was also presented to the public in community meetings on July 24 and August 1. We learned that Create Today presented five possible models to consider for the future of the Armory. From the five models, the City narrowed it down to two options. In Option 1, which Create Today noted was not the City’s “core competency,” the City, as owners and operators of the Armory building, would displace its long standing anchor tenant, along with the rest of the current tenants, and our organization would be dissolved. In Option 2, dubbed the “multiple tenants model,” which did not include a business or financial plan, we would likely face rents that we could not sustain while serving our mission and our commitments to the community, if in fact we were chosen by the City to remain in our spaces.

We are disappointed to learn that the City would support these two models. At the July 24th and August 1 community meetings convened by the City and led by the consultant, we were told that model 1 would create “more accessible space for the arts and more diversity in programming.” We found these statements to be largely based on confusing assumptions. We don’t understand why City operation of the building necessarily equates with greater access and diversity when in fact the opposite could prove to be true depending on the plan.

Over the past nearly 20 years, the Center for Arts at the Armory has survived, and flourished against all odds, because of broad community support that has guided and bolstered CAA along the way, and because of a small group of Board members, staff, volunteers and supporters who have dedicated their passion, time, expertise and resources to what the Armory is today, and the potentiality of what it can become.

We will be documenting all community input at the August 15th community meeting, and sharing it with City officials. We will also be circulating this petition urging the City of Somerville to do the following:

abandon the proposed model 1 for the Armory building (City as owner and operator model)
adopt a 3rd party operator model
issue RFPs for a 3rd party operator and for prospective Armory arts/culture tenants
create an Armory governance model

Thank you in advance for your concern and engagement in this process related to a historical and cherished building that is at the center of the Somerville community.

The Co-Directors at the Center for Arts at the Armory:Stephanie Scherpf, Co-Director and CEO, and Jess White, Co-Director and COO

The Center for Arts at the Armory Board of Directors: Hathalee Higgs (Board Chair), Ruth Faris, Neil Berman, Amanda Klein and Ivan Abarca

Meeting Details and Virtual Participation Option

Below please find the Zoom invitation to join the August 15th 7pm Community Meeting virtually. The meeting will be recorded. While participants will have the option to deactivate their cameras, by participating in the Zoom meeting, you are giving your consent to be recorded and be projected on screen at the in-person meeting. The Zoom meeting and the in-person meeting will be running simultaneously and we will be making an effort to create an inclusive and cohesive meeting. The Zoom meeting will be projected on the screen in the Armory Performance Hall. Virtual participants will have the opportunity to make public commentary live streamed at the in-person meeting. All commentators will be limited to 2 minutes. Virtual participants will also have the opportunity to ask questions.

Arts at the Armory is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Arts at the Armory’s Community Meeting

Time: Aug 15, 2023 07:00 PM – 9:00PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88920641082?pwd=cm1GY3A0emVpSXZCb0xXYXRMNVJpZz09

Meeting ID: 889 2064 1082

Passcode: 577443

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