“I’m ecstatic. I’ve been actively involved in advocating for this for five or six years, but I’ve got records on my shelf of motions brought to city council about this going back to 1979,” said Darcy Logan, curator and gallery manager of the Bowman Arts Centre. Tenders will go out to build the new $12.6-million community arts centre in 2011, with construction to build the first portion of the project later that year.
The new project will encompass the entire 700 block of 3 Avenue South. It has been vacant since the end of May last year when the city’s sole downtown grocery store closed.
The Bowman Arts Centre will close their existing facility and move into the new facility upon its completion in 2012. Further down the road a new performance facility is to be built as well.
“This will benefit the entire community,” Logan continued adding the new arts centre will include rooms for visual arts including tapestry makers, photographers, dancers, painters as well as rehearsal rooms for dramatic groups, plus meeting rooms, open rooms for individual use and an art gallery.
“It’s not just for visual artists, it’s for all elements of the community,” Logan said.
While the Bowman Arts Centre was under consideration for renovations, this new project works better. Tenders for the 27,000-square-foot community arts centre will go out in2011. Construction is to be completed in 2012.
“It’s size works better, the Bowman Arts Centre was too small 30 years ago. And we’ve grown. It’s full and we’ve had to turn people away,” Logan continued, who wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to how many people use the Bowman Arts Centre.
“It’s packed to capacity almost every night with artists, people enrolled in speech and dance classes, people with developmental disabilities,” he said.
“This is going to meet our current needs and leaves room for future growth,” he continued.
“We were never sure whether we were going to expand the Bowman Arts Centre or not, but now it’s nice to be able to do some firm planning,” he said.
“There’ll be rooms for people who want to rehearse or put on a small production. We weren’t able to do that before, ” added educational facility manager Claire Hatton.
The Allied Arts Council is also ecstatic about the coming arts centre.
Allied Arts Council executive director Suzanne Lint, noted the organization spent a lot of the past three years putting out surveys evaluating Lethbridge arts facilities and gauging the community’s wants and needs for such a facility, so it is great to see all that hard work come to fruition.
“The result was to upgrade the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, which is well underway, and to expand the Bowman Arts centre,” she said.
“But to do that, it would eliminate all the parking,” she said adding that was one of several options which were explored.
“Those locations either wouldn’t work or weren’t for sale. In the process the IGA site came available which reasonably fit for a community arts centre,” she continued adding the central location and close proximity to other arts facilities will go a long way towards revitalizing the downtown core.
“It ’s a great way to revitalize the downtown. It has potential,” she said adding the site , which will spread over 7th Avenue and into Galt Gardens, will have ample room for a new performing arts centre too.
“ The Bowman Arts Centre began in the ’60s when our population was 35,000, now our population is closer to 85,000 and the facility has had an impact on negative growth of the arts,” she said.
While the new centre will also have room for office space, Lint said the Allied Arts Council may consider a move over there, as long as they can retain their street level store front presence.
“We wouldn’t want to lose that,” she said adding a steering committee will be struck to determine a cost structure to keep the new facility economically viable.
“It’s our responsibility top look at, at least in part, to look at an operating model to still make it affordable for arts organizations which don’t traditionally have any money,” she said.
Th Lethbridge Playgoers, one of the community groups who utilize the Bowman Arts Centre, don’t expect much to change with the new venue.
“It won’t be much different than what we’re used to. We’re going to pretty much utilize it the same, but it will be bigger and more grand,” observed Ed Bayly, the new president of the long standing theatre group.
“We’ll certainly be looking at it for rehearsal space. Until then we’ll carry on like we have been for the past 87 years,” Bayly continued. The group usually rehearse in the St. Johns Ambulance building basement.
“It’s been a long time coming. The Allied Arts Council in conjunction with the city have been working on this for a while,” Bayly said.
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat editor
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