The College of Fine Arts is shifting its focus to look at a building in a shopping center to house its theater initiative for the next three years.
The College of Fine Arts’ goal in Dublin, Ohio has changed.
The college has been exploring Dublin for the past year to find a venue that can be home to a new Ohio University-affiliated professional theater company after OU severed ties with the Monomoy Theatre in Chatham, Massachusetts.
The original plan was to have something ready for the summer of 2015.
“As the year has gone on, we began to realize we didn’t have enough stability yet or enough pieces to do a season this summer in 2015,” said Margaret Kennedy-Dygas, dean of CoFA. “We decided to delay. So now, our focus is 2016.”
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This original plan also included explorations into Dublin’s high schools as possible temporary venues for the professional theater company, but the idea has since been dismissed due to the schools’ packed summer schedules.
Now, Kennedy-Dygas said a facility is being pursued as a temporary home to the company. No agreement has yet been made.
Located in the Dublin Village Center shopping plaza, GolfTEC is a 15,000-square-foot, “open-forum building,” said Jeff Stavroff, a partner of Stavroff Interests, which owns the shopping center.
Because of the structure of the building, Stavroff said it would be “very easy to accommodate” the college’s design and transform the space into a theater.
GolfTEC is temporarily in the shopping center, Stavroff said, after its original location closed. Its lease will expire in June and if the partnership with CoFA moves along, no new business would fill that space in the meantime.
Both Kennedy-Dygas and Stavroff mentioned the attraction of the facility’s location, which is at an intersection of Interstate 270 and Sawmill Road.
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The goal, Kennedy-Dygas said, is to lease this building year-round for a three-year agreement, starting in January 2016. With access year-round, the building would be open for rental for other university and Dublin functions, Kennedy-Dygas said.
Kennedy-Dygas said negotiations will have to be made in regards to who will pay for the renovations to the space. She estimated CoFA will need a “safety net” of $500,000 to $800,000per year to cover all the costs, including productions. Of that, $350,000 to $400,000 would cover the costs of the lease, housing, meals, visiting Equity Actors, props, costumes and sets.
She said she doesn’t believe the renovations to the space will be an “enormous expense” because they wouldn’t be permanent changes.
Her biggest concern now, she said, is finding housing for the company. The two options she mentioned were extended-stay hotel suites and dorm space in nearby colleges.
Michael Lincoln, artistic director of the Division of Theater, said all the theater faculty have signed a letter in support of this new initiative.
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Even with this new short-term goal, the long-term goal to have a permanent arts space as part of Dublin’s Bridge Street Project, a $300-million plan to renovate its downtown area, is still in place. It just might not happen for five to six years, as Kennedy-Dygas said the city has to find supplemental funding for the project in addition to what it had originally allocated.
Meanwhile, after a long delay, the Monomoy Theatre announced it would open this summer with its usual eight-show lineup. The University of Hartford replaced OU as the primary financial supporter. Chatham group, Friends of Monomoy Theatre, is still continuing its support.
Four OU students are going to Monomoy this summer — a significant decrease from when OU used to comprise the majority of the 37-person company.
Justen Locke, a second-year graduate student studying scenic and lighting design, is one of the four and said going will be a “learning curve” without having OU as a fallback if a problem arises.
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As for Dublin, Locke said he is glad plans were delayed so that things aren’t done poorly if they are rushed.
Some students, such as third-year graduate actor Alycia Kunkle, are still cautious.
“I’m hopeful for the future. … But I do feel that we’ve been given sleeves out of a vest,” said Kunkle, who went to Monomoy for two summers. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
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