Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
AURORA | One of the city’s primary artistic hubs is in store for a facelift in 2021, though the planned makeover has cast dashes of doubt on who will call the Aurora Cultural Arts District home in the coming years.
City planners are slated to soon begin a $150,000 improvement project at the ACAD studio building following months of delays spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially funded as part of the city’s 2020 budget, the project will improve the some 19,000-square-foot building’s crumbling entryway, flooring, bathrooms and lighting, city officials have said.
“These are going to be really basic improvements to make the building more usable by the artists,” said Andrea Amonick, manager of the city’s development services division and the Aurora Urban Renewal Authority.
But the exact scope of work for the building at 1400 Dallas St. hinges on the outcome of pending environmental testing for asbestos.
“It’s pretty common to do some testing,” Amonick said. “ … We want to talk about opening up the basement a little bit, so we’d be taking down some walls … We’re just being cautious.”
Originally constructed in 1955, the building for years served as an Aurora police substation. The city resumed control of the structure in 2012 after subleasing the property to the defunct arts group Other Side Arts for nearly a decade, according to Arapahoe County assessor’s records.
That the noxious chemical previously used as a fire retardant may be lingering in the building’s bones has peeved some of the property’s longtime tenants, several of whom have bemoaned how city officials have approached the upcoming remodeling effort.
“What’s happening here is they are poo-pooing and squelching this asbestos exposure — there is no safe level of asbestos,” said Rene Farkass, an artist who’s rented multiple studios in the building for more than a decade. “They’re wrangling control of the arts vision of 1400 Dallas to facilitate a sort of ‘art washing’ in the district to make it friendlier to development and gentrification, which suits, perhaps, some people’s goals at (Aurora city hall).”
Farkass and other ACAD tenants have lamented the city’s decision to shutter the building for up to four months this summer as contractors swap out ballasts, tear up floors and, potentially, remove walls. City staffers have told the building’s seven current tenants that they may be able to leave their supplies in their respective spaces, though the facility will be inaccessible from May 31 through September.
“The short answer is, temporarily, everybody will be displaced,” Amonick told artists during a conference call earlier this month, a recording of which was provided to The Sentinel.
All current tenants will be given priority to sign new leases upon the building’s reopening this fall, according to Amonick.
“It’s not an application process where we approve you or don’t approve you, but they will be asked to sign a new lease when they come back,” she said. “We’re not expecting there to be, like, cost increases or anything like that.”
For years, the city has rented studios, offices and performance spaces of varying sizes at the building for as little as $125 per month.
But the inability to create and perform at the facility this summer will exacerbate an already thorny artistic season for group’s like the 5280 Artist Co-op, which has used the space at 1400 Dallas for various performances for five years.
“As it is right now, we’re looking at trying to do our production in a whole other place — like in Denver — because there’s nowhere for us to do our production in the district,” said Stephanie Hancock, a founding partner of 5280 and current president of the ACAD board of directors. “It’s kind of disheartening for us … we want to continue to be productive, but right now we’re just not.”
She said the city’s other venues in the neighborhood, The Aurora Fox and The People’s Building, don’t have the space needed to support her planned four weeks of rehearsals and four weeks of performances this May and June.
Other artists have said they fret about the moving costs associated with lugging their equipment in and out of the building in the coming months.
“This is going to be an enormous expense for me,” said Craig Steele, a visual artist based out of the Dallas Street hub for more than a dozen years.
Endale Getahun, head of ACAD-based KETO-LP, a radio station catered to the regional Ethiopian community, also expressed worry that he would be unable to move his broadcasting equipment, which is federally mandated to operate at a certain location at specific times.
The city has offered to help artists find temporary spaces or subsidize moving costs on a case-by-case basis, according to Phil Nachbar, the city’s development project manager.
“We understand that’s a burden that maybe you didn’t anticipate,” he told artists earlier this month.
While acknowledging the hiccup the renovations will cause for artists, Amonick and Nachbar both pointed to the benefits of the long-term improvements for the area. Citing a market study conducted two years ago by national art consultant Art Space, both city planners said the improvements are intended to bolster much-needed studio space in the district.
“Basically what’s needed is more affordable artist space for all areas,” Nachbar said. “ … Visual arts in particular is lacking in terms of having enough space for developing artists, music and dance. Our hope is this could fulfill some of that promise.”