Arts United, Fort Wayne's umbrella arts organization, continues full speed ahead on the massive $42-million renovation of its flagship, the historic Arts United Center.
The project, which was officially begun on Aug. 7, with a well-attended groundbreaking ceremony at the site, is expected to be completed late this summer, with a city-wide celebration slated for some time this fall.
“This groundbreaking marks a milestone not only for Arts Campus Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne’s state and city-recognized cultural district, but the community as a whole,” Dan Ross, Arts United’s President and CEO maintains.
“The Arts United Center has been our community’s theatre for five decades, and we are preserving that important history. It will continue serving future generations as it becomes fully functional and accessible.”
WBOI’s Julia Meek discusses the progress being made with Ross, as well as the challenges involved, the building’s historic significance, and how the project is living up to its tagline, “A Soaring Vision,” for the entire community.
You can connect and stay updated on the progress at the Arts United website.
Below is a transcript of their conversation:
Julia Meek: Dan Ross, welcome.
Dan Ross: Thank you. It is very nice to be here. Julia.
Julia Meek: It's a great New Year, and Arts United has been working overtime without a pause. So in word, Dan, what's the vibe over there at Arts United Central?
Dan Ross: It is pleasantly busy!
Julia Meek: (chuckles) Are you satisfied with things so far?
Dan Ross: Absolutely! It has been an exciting year. 2024 was an amazing year for us and 2025 is going to be fantastic.
Julia Meek: And besides the pre-planning, you've been at the renovation of your mothership, the Arts United Center, since July of 2024 so let's start there. What has been targeted and how's it all going by now?
Dan Ross: Boy, it has been such an exciting project. We've been working on this for a long, long time, as you know. It's been nine or 10 years, honestly, since we first started talking about this project, and we have had so much support from the community and so much input from the community.
It's just been fantastic. So, building up to the point where we were ready to actually break ground in July, it was exciting to actually break ground and get the project started. So right now, we're on time and looking good with our budget, so we feel like we're in a good place.
Julia Meek: Now, this whole grand plan actually included that total move to temporary housing while all of this is getting done. How's this working out, beginning with the staff that had to be moved in the temporary housing?
Dan Ross: Yes, this project has been such a big project, and it has involved moving all of the current staff out of the Arts United Center in order for the Hagerman team to come in and do the construction.
So, Civic Theater staff needed to vacate the building. Youth Theater staff needed to vacate the building. Arts United's operations staff and box office staff needed to vacate the building. So, it's very different over in that building than it has been in the 50 years that the building has been there.
But it's been great for us to move our staff. Arts United staff, we moved everybody into the Auer Center, and so this is the first time in 50 years where all of Arts United's employees are under the same roof.
So, our whole team are together in one building. And it's really great for our team to all be sharing the same space for a while.
Julia Meek: It's nice to have that closeness and what kind of creative collaborations are you seeing from the resident organizations that don't have a place to perform until the new building is done?
Dan Ross: Yeah, that is such a great question. You know, again, we've been planning this project for such a long time and have been working closely with our partner organizations in this planning process.
Their input has been really important to the actions that we're taking with the building. So our partners knew the schedule and have been planning for a few years what they were going to do during the time that the Arts United Center was shut down.
I feel like particularly the Civic Theatre and the Fort Wayne Ballet are kind of the primary users, and they have both done just a great job of taking their seasons on the road. So it's the road show season for both of those organizations, which allows them to meet some new people in different ways.
Fort Wayne Civic Theatre has performed at the Foellinger Theatre and at the Embassy. Fort Wayne Ballet ended up working closely with the Pearl Arts Center, which is a fantastic new space that just opened up this year.
The timing was perfect to have Pearl Arts coming online at the time that the Arts United Center was being shut down for renovations, and so the Fort Wayne Ballet has done, will do several performances during the course of this year.
But also, they were able to do their Nutcracker in the Scottish Rite or the USF Goldstein Performing Arts Center. And as most of our listeners will know, Chuck Surack recently purchased that building and is going to be renovating it coming up in the next year or two.
I don't know exactly that time frame, but I really appreciated the fact that Chuck chose to leave that building in place while our building is under construction, making it available to the community to utilize during this transition time.
And when our building is opened back up, then I think Chuck is going to start on some renovations at that building, and we'll have another newly renovated space here in a few years.
Julia Meek: Grand plans with the whole community, the arts community and the arts appreciating community all the better for it.
Dan Ross: I agree completely. And again, I appreciate the cooperation and the working together of several venues and several organizations and supporters of the arts.
Julia Meek: And our arts supporters tend to overlap in this community, another nice, helpful thing at this time.
Dan Ross: Yes, absolutely, I agree completely.
Julia Meek: Now, like it or not, Dan, COVID taught all of us a lot, including to flex and be creative, something this city is admittedly good at. What did that teach you and yours? Did it help you plan for all of this extra, extra, extra crazy activity?
Dan Ross: Well, that is such a great point. (chuckles) We did learn to be flexible during the pandemic. And one of the things I will say, you know, I mentioned that we had been planning this project for 9 or 10 years, and so we were really just starting to ramp up our capital fundraising for this project when COVID hit.
So Arts United as an organization, boy, we made a shift, because we recognized that we needed to focus on the survivability of arts and cultural organizations in this community. We stopped our capital fundraising, and a couple of our large donors agreed to allow us to transfer their gifts to our Resilience Fund.
This community stepped up and quickly raised $3 million to support arts and cultural organizations before the government programs, you know, Shuttered Venues and PPP programs that the government put together, before those got going, you know, our community raised $3 million through Arts United in order to support arts and cultural organizations.
And I was just so proud of our community, but also proud of Arts United's board of directors to make that commitment, to make that shift with the confidence that, hey, when it's time for us to get back to fundraising for this campaign, then we'll shift back to that.
And so we did, about 18 months later, then we really kicked back into the fundraising for our campaign, and sure enough, the community really rallied around making sure that this project of expanding and modernizing the Arts United Center would happen.
So, yeah, we learned a lot of lessons during COVID. I think we did as a community, but we certainly did as an organization at Arts United.
Julia Meek: Okay, so what artcentric offerings were you able to share with the community this last year, despite the upheaval and everything else you've told us you were up to as well?
Dan Ross: Well, it has been such a great year to keep things moving forward. And one of the things that we have talked about at Arts United for the last few years is that Arts United has a variety of roles that we play in this community, through business services, support for arts and cultural organizations, in addition to the facility support, grant making, advocacy on behalf of the arts.
All of these roles that Arts United plays are so critical to the arts and cultural ecosystem in our community. You know, we recognize that we could not put all of those things on hold while we're embarked on this major construction project.
And as much focus and energy on the part of the organization as is required to do a $42 billion construction project, still all of the other roles that we play in the community, boy, those are important roles that we need to continue to do.
And I've just been very proud of our staff, but also of our board for maintaining the focus on ensuring that Arts United is doing the job that we need to do to support arts and culture in this community because of the way arts and culture supports our broader community.
I feel like these arts and cultural assets that we have in this community are part of the building blocks of what makes Fort Wayne such a fantastic place to be. Arts United has an important role to play in that, and I'm proud of our team for continuing to do the work we need to do.
Julia Meek: It's actually historically so, the fact that it has played such an important part all this while. Now, stepping back for just a second, what are some of the biggest surprises you've seen since July of 2024 when all of this really started happening?
Dan Ross: Well, it's been exciting to see the level of support. I'll share some of the fun surprises. So one of the things when we actually did our groundbreaking, we had, I think somebody told me that we had, like, between 150 and 200 people who showed up for our groundbreaking, which I just never would have dreamed that we would have that many people.
But to me, that was a testament of how many people in this community have helped bring this project to fruition and felt invested in it and wanted to be there to celebrate kicking it off. That was kind of the first fun "fun surprise" and then another kind of fun surprise, but a surprise, construction began, and the Hagerman team was doing work on the west expansion, over on the Freimann Square side of the building.
As they were doing the foundation work and doing the excavation, I got a phone call and said, Well, we found out that some of Barr Street is still down there. Barr Street used to run straight through where the park is, you know, just to the west of the Arts United Center. And when it was demoed, not all of the street, apparently, was excavated.
So what we found was we needed to do just a little more excavation than had initially been intended. But I just thought it was kind of fun to find that there's still a little bit of Barr Street sitting under there that we're going to have to deal with.
Julia Meek: One more bit of history, indeed. And I do wonder, Dan, all the juggling, all the surprises, dealing with quick fixes whenever you need to put them in, does it ever get any easier now, through this process, and will moving back in be easier than moving out, do you think?
Dan Ross: Boy, those are great questions. I will say the change is ongoing. The work is ongoing. And I think you get to the point where you're just accustomed to those changes. You're used to adapting to it. The size of the project is big, and so the dollars are big, and you get used to working at that scale.
So, I think you do adapt to that and move forward. And part of it, for me is just the confidence that this is going to succeed. The community's behind this project. We have great staff working on this. We have great board members and volunteers working on this, a great group of consultants and contractors that we're working with.
So confidence that this is going to move forward successfully certainly is the watch word for me. I genuinely believe it, and I'm seeing that happen. But yeah, there is kind of ongoing change and things to adapt. (both chuckle)
The second half of that question that you asked, which I really appreciated, was, is moving in going to be easier or harder than moving out? And that is such a wonderful question. I will say our operations team did just such a fantastic job of moving out of that building.
The building was 50 years old, and it had 50 years worth of stuff in it. There's a 20 feet deep basement throughout that building, and it was filled to the brim with all kinds of things. And we wanted to make sure that we got that building emptied out because of all the important changes that we're making, and to give the Hagerman team the space they need to come in and do the work they're doing.
So, it was a tremendous amount of effort for the Arts United staff, but also the Civic Theatre staff and the Fort Wayne Ballet staff and the Youtheater staff, all the organizations who have been a part of the history of that building. So, moving out was really a tremendous undertaking.
I think moving back in, it'll take work. It's not going to be easy to move back in, but I think it's going to be really exciting! Because moving back in is going to allow us to work with the new theatrical equipment that's been installed.
Part of the moving back in is commissioning that new equipment, training on that new equipment, adapting to the new opportunities that we're going to have because of what this space is going to be able to do, the ways it's going to be able to serve the organizations and the community in ways that it never has in the last 50 years.
So I think moving in is, it's still a lot of work, but I think it's going to be easier just from the perspective of that the excitement and the opportunities.
Julia Meek: Clean slate, the clean basement, (both chuckle) and yes, full speed ahead. Good for you! And one side note, the center itself is now on the National Register of Historic Places, which is wonderful. What does that gain the arts campus and the whole community for that matter.
Dan Ross: Well, it's really exciting to me to see this building, which just turned 50 years old, and so it's really early on in the time that it's eligible to be listed on the National Register, but to see this midcentury modern theatrical space designed by the world renowned architect, Louis Kahn, his only performing arts center in the entire world, his only built structure in the Midwest.
You know, it's just, it's really exciting to see that being recognized with that listing on the National Register, and not just being listed, but being listed with national significance. Listed with national significance because of Louis Kahn and because of the technical team that he was working with when the project came to be. I think it says a lot for our community.
It says a lot for the forward thinking of our community leaders. You know, 60 years ago, as they were planning for that project to engage an architect of the capacity of Louis Kahn. I think it says really good things about our community and about our arts campus.
I love the fact that you described that as the mothership, the flagship of the campus, and I think that is something for us to be proud of. And the work that we're doing to maintain the essence of Louis Kahn and that midcentury modern architectural masterpiece, but at the same time making the changes to bring it into the 21st century, making it accessible, making it technologically advanced.
You know, doing all the things that we need that building to do to serve the needs of our community going forward.
Julia Meek: It's righteous, and it speaks to Fort Wayne as a city that saved itself, that is resilient, that is going places.
Dan Ross: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more.
Julia Meek: So, with that update, what would you say the state of the arts is here, as we enter 2025. How are you doing business as normal, when, once again, there's no normal?
Dan Ross: Boy. That is such a great point. (chuckles) Yes, there's not a lot of normal. You're absolutely right that things changed during the pandemic, audience behaviors changed, just people's lives changed, and arts organizations have needed to adapt to meet people's needs.
But I believe that the arts are incredibly strong in Fort Wayne and performing arts organizations and museums who require individuals to visit them in order to have that earned revenue, those organizations have all needed to adapt somewhat to the way that the public interacts with them.
But I feel like our arts organizations are resilient, and I feel that they are focused on meeting our community's needs. And I think our community recognizes the value that arts and cultural experiences bring, more than they ever have.
You know, I feel like our community doesn't simply appreciate the arts. I believe our community truly values the arts and what they bring to the lives of our people, what they bring to the economic development of our community, what they bring to families and how people interact with each other during these difficult times.
So, I truly believe that our community shows its value for the arts today in ways that it has not done in the past. And I think that our arts organizations are responding and working hard to meet the needs and desires of the people of our community.
Julia Meek: And knowing that those needs are met, do you feel their excitement? I mean, is this a ricochet? Is it going all the way through the area by now?
Dan Ross: Yeah, I think that's a really good description, and I think it is sort of self-feeding. You know, you have a spiral up, right, as the public responds positively to what arts and cultural experiences are being offered, then more exciting arts and cultural experiences can be offered for people to take advantage of. It's a positive upward spiral.
Julia Meek: And looking forward then into 2025, which we are right here, right now, what can we expect?
Dan Ross: Well, one of the things that we are certainly excited about in Arts United. In 2025, we will have the grand reopening of the Arts United Center. So for us, in the fall of 2025, we're looking at October, that we'll do a weekend of grand reopening.
We're looking forward to working with some of the great arts organizations and partners in this community who have utilized this building for years but also looking at individuals and organizations who may not have had as much opportunity to utilize the space.
One of the big goals of this project is to make sure that arts and cultural experiences are accessible to all people of our community, and we're striving to do that with physical accessibility.
We've had tremendous support from the AWS foundation, but many other organizations in this community, with the goal of making the Arts United Center accessible for people of a variety of abilities, not just as audience members, and we're doing many things to expand the accessibility for audience members, but also for performers, for backstage technicians, for volunteers.
You know, making sure that we have appropriate seating, appropriate elevator access, appropriate family restroom facilities. That we have the kind of amenities that are needed so that all people will feel welcomed and feel able to utilize the facility that just weren't prevalent in 1973 when this building opened.
It needs to be today, and it will be with the work that we're doing, and we're really excited about that. But also, we want to provide access to our spaces for organizations who may not have previously felt like that's for me, you know? That's not for us. Well, it is for us.
This is our community's theater. We want this space to be a space that all people in our community feel like they're home there, and that's what we're working for.
Julia Meek: So last question Dan this project's tagline, "A soaring vision." What do you want everyone in the community to know about this vibrant skyline we have going and this vision you bring?
Dan Ross: Well, our "soaring vision" truly is that this building will help to make arts and cultural experiences accessible to all people in this community.
Julia Meek: So, sky's the limit?
Dan Ross: Sky's the limit!
Julia Meek: Dan Ross is President and CEO of Arts United. Thank you for sharing your time, your vision, and all of the hard work that you have with us today and every day, Dan. Keep up the great work.
Dan Ross: Thank you, Julia. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
