Arts center advances plans for performance space
Photo/Robert M. Cook
Deirdre Nice, executive director of the St. Lawrence Arts Center in Portland
When Deirdre Nice muses about the potential that a proposed 400-seat Sanctuary Auditorium at St. Lawrence Arts Center on Munjoy Hill would bring, she envisions more freedom as well as dollar signs.
"Our business plan has us moving toward independence" as a financially self-sufficient arts center, says Nice, who has served as the nonprofit's executive director since 2003 after stepping down as owner of Silly's restaurant.
The nonprofit arts center has wanted to transform the space once occupied by the now-demolished church sanctuary into a larger performing arts venue for several years. The group yesterday filed an application for a zoning change with the Portland Planning Department.
The St. Lawrence Church was built in 1897 and later transformed into a community arts center after the Friends of The St. Lawrence Church, a nonprofit organization, acquired the property in 1996. Since 2001, the Friends of St. Lawrence Church has offered one of the city's most intimate venues to see concerts, plays, musicals and other performing artists in the 110-seat Parish Hall, hosting roughly 30,000 patrons a year.
Nice says it could take two to three months for the city to give the Sanctuary Auditorium project the green light, but it could take up to two years for the group to raise approximately $15 million to build a state-of-the-art theater with the latest green technology that blends with the architecture of the church, a city historic landmark that is also on the National Register of Historic Places.
Julia Kirby, the arts center's development director since February, says the group would begin a capital campaign if the city approves the request zoning change. "We are absolutely 100% confident we will raise that and more," Nice says.
Plans were moving forward to renovate the former church's sanctuary space into a 400-seat auditorium in 2006 before extensive roof damage was discovered, forcing arts center officials to tear down the existing structure in 2008. The arts center had hired Mills Whitaker Architects LLC in Cambridge, Mass., to produce conceptual drawings and estimates of the renovation costs involved.
Currently, all that exists of the project is a fenced-in, empty lot on the corner of Munjoy and Congress streets. The arts center is hoping to hear from the planning department in a couple of weeks to set up dates for workshops on the proposed zoning change.
Nice says the arts center manages to put on several shows each year and stays in the black after meeting its annual $150,000 budget from a combination of rental, ticket revenue, concession sales, donations and state and federal grants. She says a 400-seat Sanctuary Auditorium would give the St. Lawrence Arts Center the ability to host larger audience and rent out the Parish Hall space in conjunction with the auditorium for weddings, business meetings and other events.
She says that theater groups and performers like the Stone Pinheads Ensemble, which will stage the musical "Jesus and the Pirates" beginning Wednesday, could earn more money from increased ticket sales.
Nice says the Sanctuary Auditorium will also help Portland's performing arts community fill a niche with a 400-seat option that would fall between venues like the 200-seat Longfellow Square and the 274-seat Portland Stage Co. and the Merrill Auditorium, which seats 1,600 people.
Beyond giving the arts center new revenue streams and making it financially independent, Kirby says the auditorium project could add momentum to the Munjoy Hill neighborhood revitalization effort, which has resulted in some new restaurants, art galleries and renovated housing. Nice says the project and the arts center also reflect the city's desire to expand its creative economy.
"We all feed off one another," says Nice.
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