It's been a year since the City Council announced its RFP for the Re-use of the Armory. Since then, the Spaces team of RACC, headed up by Debi Neville and Stephen Troutman, has been diligently working toward securing the building as a center for the Rochester community to engage with each other through artistic and cultural/ethnic outlets. The need for such a place was overwhelmingly evident, as indicated by the fact that the Spaces team was one of the original subgroups that came out of our first Rochester Arts and Culture Collaborative public meetings back in 2014. Needs assessments had been done, surveys, discussions, even a public meeting about possible re-use of the Chateau, before the city even set up its own task force on it.
So when the RFP opened the Spaces team was primed to get to work. And get to work they did. They contacted individuals and organizations for commitments of various degrees, gathered input about possible uses, started a business plan, incorporated the Arts and Cultural Initiative as a first step towards forming a non-profit entity to run and manage the facility. Dozens, if not 100+, individual artists, cultural organizations, and arts organizations signed on as possible tenants (long and short term), event users, or simply strong supporters.
March 31, Debi Neville delivered the proposal, which constituted hundreds of hours of work by the Spaces team, and a three-ring binder of letters of support, to City Hall. Then the wait began. Communication lines were kept open with the city administration, committee members were ready to offer more information or answer questions as they arose, but they heard nothing. Then it was announced in June that the two proposals delivered by the deadline would be discussed at the Committee of the Whole meeting on July 11. The team sprang into action again and prepared a thorough presentation, lined up speakers, and invited supporters to attend. The presentation was impressive, council members asked thoughtful questions, and Pres. Randy Staver concluded the meeting with the promise that something could be known in three weeks.
Sometime after the July 11 presentation, it became known that a third proposal had just been offered to the city, an Armory Arts Academy charter school. For more information about that, check out Dave Beal's blog post about it as well as this PB article. It muddied the water - some council members read it, some didn't. But it seemed to factor into all of their thought processes around the current proposals, as we learned at the August 22 Committee of the Whole meeting, when the RFP was next discussed.
It was at this meeting that the Council members voted to put a Request for Council Action on the September 7 City Council meeting. This RCA had multiple steps including rejecting the proposals, appraising the building, marketing the building for sale, possibly engaging a commercial real estate firm. In taking this action they cited concerns about financial feasibility of the two proposals, the question of whether it would better serve the city's interest to sell the building, the issue of new interest by other groups who missed the RFP window. It is important to note here that between July 11 and August 22, no council member reached out to the ACI to ask questions or to gather more information.
It was also at this meeting that City Administrator Steven Kvenvold read a recommendation out of the report on the Chateau Theatre market study by Webb Management Services which strongly suggested support for keeping an arts and cultural presence downtown. The full report, which is quite interesting, can be found here.
Between August 22 and September 7, there was a tremendous outpouring of support for the ACI proposal. Elected officials got involved, a petition (ultimately with 600 signatures) was started by our friends at CIDI, people contacted their representatives on the council, meetings were held. It was very exciting and encouraging.
At the September 7 meeting, the RCA was amended to include provisions to offer the building (if they decided to sell it) first to the ACI (and the Veteran's Museum, although they had just graciously withdrawn their proposal in support of the Arts and Cultural center), and to preserve its historic nature. During the open comment period, Rochester citizens speaking to their city council, spoke eloquently in defense of a "front door" to Rochester, a welcoming, inviting, creative, diverse place where people meet and learn and grow. We encourage you to watch this opening part of the meeting - you can see it rebroadcast on charter channel 180. It's quite inspiring!
The final vote was to accept the amended RCA. This does not mean the city council will definitely sell the building, but it does mean the proposals are currently off the table while the sale possibility is investigated. Council member Wojcik also instructed city staff to present options to the council for a more thorough analysis of the ACI proposal. This implies that at some future date, the council can, and we deeply hope will, re-open the discussion of re-use of the Armory by the ACI.
The waiting game continues, but the dream is not dead!
