Meet Me Downtown

With a countdown from local newsman and former downtown resident Dan Marries,  the brand-new marquee at The Screening Room on Congress Street was lit up Friday night to the cheers of a crowd of a couple hundred celebrants who filled the north lane of Congress.

The obligatory self-congratulatory build-up included on-stage recognition of people that made it happen, such as Michael Keith and architects Ibarra and Rosano, joyful appreciation from Arizona Media Arts Center denizens Giulio Scalinger and Claudia Jesperson, and political speeches.

After the new marquee was lit up, the Fox Theatre marquee–one block to the west, and the Rialto Theatre marquee–two blocks to the east, were turned on as well, in a symbolic reference to the fact that the three marquees have been installed and lighted just within the last several years.

Even as controversy envelops the property one block east of The Screening Room, the north side of the 6th Avenue to Scott Avenue block seems to be on its way back to vitality.  The Screening Room’s bright, but appropriately-scaled marquee, is the new visual anchor of that block, but it is flanked by the new Zen Rock nightclub, and the soon-to-open steak restaurant, A Steak in the Neighborhood.

The Screening Room, a cozy independent cinema on Congress Street, now has a real movie theater marquee, as of Tuesday morning. 

Congress Street is narrowed to one lane between 6th Avenue and Scott Avenue, so that workers can complete the installation of the sign.  The marquee was paid for by the Arizona Media Arts Center (AzMAC), which owns and manages the theater, and by a matching Facade Improvement Grant from the City of Tucson.

As noted before in this blog, the marquee will give The Screening Room a much-needed boost in its visibility and profile.   The theater is the home of the annual Arizona International Film Festival, and what AzMAC calls “Extraordinary Films Not Shown on Ordinary Screens”.

A lighting ceremony is planned for Friday, October 30 at 6:00pm, 127 E. Congress St.

The Warehouse Arts Management Organization has successfully attained the Internal Revenue Service’s blessing as a non-profit organization that is eligible to collect tax-deductible donations and seek foundation grants. The IRS seal of approval is the much-sought-after 501c3 designation, and WAMO’s status has been awarded retroactively to 2005.

The news was announced to WAMO’s board of directors on Saturday, August 15, by WAMO’s part-time executive director Jim Wilcox.

WAMO is an organization that was created to manage artist-occupied warehouses in the Historic Warehouse Arts District, a National Register Historic District on the north edge of Downtown, along the Union Pacific railroad tracks. Many of the buildings are owned by the Arizona Department of Transportation, and were acquired in the 1980s by ADOT for the purpose of building a highway. Artists came to these spaces in search of affordable rents and to be part of a community of artists, and more than 20 years later, they are fighting to save the buildings, maintain arts-related uses, and create a sustainable arts community and district. WAMO is also the voice of the tenant artists in the district, and works with the City of Tucson to effect the preservation of arts uses in the historic warehouses in the District.

Executive Director Jim Wilcox was hired last spring; Wilcox has successfully developed artist live/work space with the International Sonoran Desert Alliance. WAMO has a voting board of directors with nine members, five of whom are practicing artists, and has three members with businesses in the district. WAMO’s advisory board consists of architects, developers, planners, and other friends of the Arts District.

WAMO’s mission can be summarized with four “P’s”: Protect, Preserve, Program, and Promote.

WAMO is known by its acronym, which is pronounced “Whamm-oh”, like an action-figure delivering a blow to a cartoon villain.

You may learn a bit more about WAMO and the City Council-approved Master Plan for the Tucson Historic Warehouse Arts District by going to WAMO’s website at www.wamotucson.org.

To make a tax-deductible donation to WAMO, send a check to:

Warehouse Arts Management Organization

P.O. Box 1882

Tucson, Arizona 85702

As I’ve disclosed in an earlier post on the topic of the Warehouse Arts District, I have been a board member of WAMO for several years.

Design of Beowulf Alley Theatre's new Facade.

A few weeks ago I noticed an appeal on Facebook from Beowulf Alley Theatre Company to contribute to its new capital campaign for façade renovation.   

Always pleased to see Downtowners working to help themselves, I made a small donation to the cause through a program called “Cause”, and emailed Beth Dell, the Managing Director at Beowulf, to learn more. 

It was clear that Dell wanted to be proactive, self-reliant, and to make Beowulf’s theatre, which occupies what was once the Johnny Gibson Gym Equipment Company, an attractive feature on 6th Avenue in Downtown.  “A few weeks ago, I decided to go about this on my own because it’s really important to me to see us grow and cleaning up the front of the building for our 5th anniversary on 6th Avenue,” says Dell.  “It would not only help us but will also make a difference in the Downtown appearance, too.” 

Just today, a Facebook announcement from Ms. Dell confirms what she told me a few days ago, that Beowulf has been selected by the City of Tucson to receive a façade renovation matching grant.  It seems that her and Beowulf’s initiative is being rewarded.  

Last year, Beowulf was among eight semifinalists for funding from the Downtown Façade Improvement Program, but was not among the four selected for the first round of grants.  Two projects are under construction through the program:  The Screening Room marquee on Congress and the office building at the corner of Scott and Broadway.  Also awarded grants:  the Rialto Block project and the Wig O Rama building at Scott and Congress.   

Dell was informed that one of the latter two projects has dropped out, leaving some funding available to Beowulf as a replacement project.   

“I’d like to try to raise the full $10,000 to do the original façade plan,” she told me last week. “If I can do that, the Gibson’s (Johnny Gibson’s family, which still owns the building) seem willing to offer their original commitment of $15,000, and we have an in-kind commitment of $5,000. The City would match these dollars with $30,000, and our $60,000 renovation would make a huge difference in the outside appearance of the building as well as attract a whole lot more attention to help us grow and expand our service to the community.” 

“I am not really good at making appeals but I am sure excited about this.”   

Dell has raised just shy of $1,000 through the Facebook appeal and from a few others who didn’t want to contribute through the “Cause” page.   

Dell seems giddy, grateful, and proud at the same time.  “It’s almost as if we were meant to be here to have this phone call (with the news of the grant). We’ve spent the past season building many new programs and have more planned for the fall. Our commitment to the community is strong and many performing artists have benefited from our being here. We’ve doubled our season subscribers, had a huge increase in single ticket sales, added both youth and adult education classes, late night and lunchtime theatre programs and started a program for playwrights to have their plays read. This fall, our new season has many new local directors, actors and technicians added to our roster. All of this meets our mission of creating a community of theatre where our home-grown artists can come to create.” 

Beowulf has a design for the refurbishment of its Art Deco-style façade, drawn up by local architect Bob Vint.   

Beowulf’s 2009-2010 season features six productions, leading off with Seascape, by Edward Albee, September 26 to October 11.  November brings Rabbit Hole, by David Lindsay-Abaire (November 7-22).  Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love runs January 16-31, 2010, followed by Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage, by Jane Martin, February 27-March 14; Last of the Boys, by Steven Dietz, April 10-25; and The Vertical Hour, by David Hare, May 29-June 13. 

Significant donations to the façade renovation campaign will receive 2 season tickets. 

For more information on Beowulf’s programs and upcoming season, visit www.BeowulfAlley.org or call 520.622.4460 (administrative office), or 520.882.0555 (box office).

To contribute to the facade renovation campaign, go to Beowulf Alley Theatre Company’s “Causes” page on Facebook.

Beowulf Alley today, from near Broadway and 6th Avenue.

Now that the proposed blockbuster deal with the Downtown Tucson Development Company is dead, the City Council is turning its attention back to aiding the development of the Warehouse Arts District by seeking control of key properties that are now in the hands of the state Transportation Department–and then seeking like-minded private sector partners, rather than relying on contributions to Warehouse District development from DTDC. 

Wednesday, August 5, the Council will consider a proposal to trade surplus City-owned properties to ADOT for three key Warehouse District properties:  the Steinfeld Warehouse, the “Toole Shed”, and another building on Toole to be occupied by teen club Skrappy’s. 

Vice Mayor Regina Romero, whose Ward 1 includes the western portion of the District, would like to see the three properties redeveloped and managed by a non-profit entity that will return these buildings to active arts uses, and will propose a Request for Qualifications and Request for Proposal process to seek qualified partners.

The three buildings, as well as others in the District, are likely to be auctioned off by the State and razed at some point, unless the City creates another path to developing the properties, consistent with the adopted Tucson Historic Warehouse Arts District (THWAD) Master Plan (2004). 

There should be a balanced long-term implementation strategy, and this seems like a good start.  Some private-sector ownership of the district is needed to get housing and commercial space developed at some point, but preservation of properties that give the area character, especially the Steinfeld Warehouse, should be a high priority.   The Warehouse Arts District has more than its share of vacant parcels that can be developed for market-rate housing and retail by a for-profit developer at some point—probably after the completion of the Downtown Links roadway in a few years—but the remaining warehouses should be saved and developed with arts-related uses.

Trading surplus property that the State may need for its own future transportation projects is a way to secure properties like Steinfeld without dropping cash at a time when the City can ill afford to spend any. 

The area has long been a home for Tucson’s true “creative class”, not the yuppie version of creative class for whom local economic development-types seem to yearn, after they all drank the Richard Florida Kool-Aid a few years ago.

Also on Romero’s plate:  the Citizen’s Warehouse on 6th Street, opposite the railroad tracks from the Steinfeld Warehouse.  The building is probably best known as the home of BICAS, a non-profit organization that refurbishes bicycles for people who need safe, reliable, affordable transportation.  Romero wants the City to obtain an easement on Citizen’s, to spare it from public auction and to maintain the existing arts uses while Downtown Links is under construction just north of the building. 

Lurking right around the corner is a revision to Town West Development’s plan for the “Platforms” site that came to the public’s attention a few years ago when Nimbus Brewing Company sought the property to build a brewery and restaurant.  Town West, which wrangled the rights to develop the property from Nimbus after owner Jim Counts was unable to secure financing within a six-month window granted by the City Council, is now proposing student housing and lots of surface parking.  Town West also has its eye on Steinfeld, which is just west of the Platforms lot, the site of the annual All Souls’ Procession finale. 

Downtown artists fear that Town West’s plan is to gain ownership of Steinfeld with a promise to refurbish it for a brew-pub, and then decide that it is too far gone to fix up, tearing it down for more student housing.  I think that student housing is part of Downtown’s future, but I can’t see the El Presidio neighborhood or Dunbar Spring neighborhood standing for it there, nor do I see the artists supporting the Town West plan, which bears little resemblance to the goals set for that property in the THWAD Master Plan.   Town West has told city officials that student housing is the only use that lenders will finance for the property now. 

Romero says it’s also time to construct a long-promised capital element of the THWAD Master Plan, the “Art Walk” on Toole Avenue.   I don’t know where the funding would come for the Art Walk, but having been a party to meetings with landscape architects and city officials years ago concerning this project—the construction of a green, accessible, inviting stretch of roadway, pedestrian/bicycle path, landscaping, and public art on Toole between 6th Avenue and 9th Avenue—I say get it going. 

I drove that segment of Toole twice on Thursday, and it is anything but green and inviting.  Yuck. 

I know that the Warehouse Arts District plan has its detractors around the Tucson community, but we should all be able to get behind following through on plans to move things forward downtown.  Fans of the Warehouse Arts District can join forces with the “just do something” crowd on this.

If we can’t save and restore buildings like Steinfeld in Downtown, and practice adaptive re-use, then what’s the point of downtown revitalization?  We could just build a faux downtown on a tract of vacant Tucson land.  Yuck again.

(Disclosure:  I have been a board member of WAMO—the Warehouse Arts Management Organization—for several years, although I was more active when I was working for the Tucson Downtown Alliance and Downtown Tucson Partnership.  WAMO is committed to the implementation of the District’s master plan, developed by a transparent public process and then adopted by the City Council five years ago.)