As Shannon Morris surveyed the bright, airy sanctuary at the former St. Alban Church, she had a thought about the future of her arts nonprofit.
"We have control over our destiny," she said.
ARTFUL, which supports artists with studio space, is moving into the building this month. It's the culmination of a year that saw Morris awarded a Cleveland Arts Prize even as her team members found themsevles "drained" after learning that they would have to vacate their former home, the Coventry PEACE campus.
“It's obviously a lot more responsibility to take care of a full building,” she said. “We were taking care of the old building, too. I will greatly miss the collaborative environment of all the organizations there. That's the part that hurts me.”
That old building was a former school, built in 1976. In the late 2000s, it became the PEACE campus, housing several arts groups. (PEACE stands for “People Enhancing a Child’s Environment.”) The campus was donated to its next-door neighbor, the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Library, in 2018. Library officials declined to renew leases last year, citing issues with building maintenance and the age of the structure.
ARTFUL moved out in January, ceasing programming and placing its equipment in storage while negotiating for purchase of the church. The original St. Alban’s building dates to the 1890s, and burned down in 1989. It was rebuilt in 1993 and but has been empty for about five years.
“There isn't any documentation about how much it costs to run the building,” Morris said.
ARTFUL bought the building for $300,000, “thanks to some large donations.”
“There's so many arts organizations out there who are facing a lot of instability and unknowns right now,” said ARTFUL co-founder Brady Dindia. “We happen to be in this sort of sweet spot where we're not so big yet that we're reliant on grants that may be pulled away. And we are small enough that … a donation from a single donor makes a difference.”
Morris said there’s already a waiting list for the two dozen studios that are slated for the former church.
“We’ve done a lot of financial forecasting,” she said. “We're very confident in our forecasts and now it's just a matter of putting that floor plan together that can live up to those forecasts.”
Right now, her team is busy clearing out, cleaning up and catching up on maintenance —all while planning for the future.
The former sanctuary will likely be preserved and used for classes and as a gallery. The industrial kitchen could be transformed into a common area for large printing equipment. There are at least two massive attics, and one of them has enough space to be divided into two studios.
Until the building is ready, ARTFUL is resuming programming off-site in places like the Cleveland Heights Community Center. That’s where the nonprofit’s quarterly PEACE Pops event resumes on July 18 at 5 p.m.
At their former home, it was an open house that allowed the community to visit with a dozen different arts-related groups. Only two of those tenants remain, with lease extensions that expire this year. No plans have been announced for the old school, which is sandwiched between PEACE Park and a county-funded urban mini forest. Last year, library director Nancy Levin said greenery is a good use of their land.
“One of the many possible outcomes is that the park could be even expanded through the area where the school is,” she said. “I know this is one that everyone wants to jump on. We could demolish the building. It's not our favorite choice. We have many choices, and I've asked for time to prepare.”
