Transition for Southborough Arts Center nearly complete
By Ken Powers Community Reporter

Southborough - With a little bit of luck, which is something that's been sorely missed the last 14 months, the transition period for the Southborough Arts Center will come to a conclusion later this month.

"We're getting there," interim Arts Center Director Emily van Nort said. "It's been a long time coming, but we're very close to having everything back to normal."

The seemingly never-ending odyssey for the Arts Center and its Highland Street building began in January 2007, when the Cultural Arts Council returned the operation of the building back to the town of Southborough.

"It seemed like too much of our focus had become wrapped up in running and keeping up with the building," van Nort said. "The upkeep, the heating costs, the recurring problems, … we thought if we returned the duties of running the building back to town it would allow us to focus on our main mission, which is promoting the arts."

At the time the Arts Center returned the building to the town, the three-floored building housed pottery and darkroom facilities in the basement, had office space and classrooms on the second floor, and had resident artist spaces and two gallery areas on the top floor.

Van Nort said that some resident artists, unhappy with the news that the town was taking over operation of the building, vacated their spaces. Instead of finding more resident artists to fill the open spaces, the town opted instead to move the town's Recreation Department office into the now open space.

"It's really a great fit for the building," van Nort said about the Recreation Department moving into the space. "Ideally, arts and recreation should be in the same building - they feed off of each other."

Things were progressing nicely through much of last year; art classes were being held and artists' works were being exhibited. Because the town was in charge of the building, it was open more, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, and there was more access, at times.

"We've had on-going problems with the elevator for years, and we were in the process of getting it renovated, so it wasn't working," van Nort said. "But we made it clear to people when they signed up for classes that there wasn't elevator access to the upper floors. If we had situations where someone with limited mobility wanted to sign up for a class, we made sure the class was somewhere they could access it easily."

Following the annual Algonquin Regional High School art exhibit in June 2007, however, the town received a letter of complaint from an attendee who had an issue with the fact that the elevator was not operational.

"At that point the town asked us to stop holding exhibits until the elevator was fixed," van Nort said. "It was supposed to be ready in early fall, then by the end of October, then mid-November, then December 1, then January 1; now it's supposed to be up and running by the end of the month."

The holdup, van Nort said, is that there were several components that needed to be fixed and those fixes had to be done in a certain order. The final fix is being worked on presently.

So, while the Arts Center is on hold from an artist and exhibit standpoint, van Nort and the staff have re-launched the website and created an e-newsletter that is sent to residents notifying them of classes and programs.

Van Nort expects exhibits to be back in the Arts Center by September.