Public brainstorms ideas in tour of vacant Portsmouth school

Idea of arts and cultural hub revived by some residents

Posted 11/15/18

PORTSMOUTH — Several years ago, the Portsmouth Arts & Culture Committee pitched the idea of establishing an arts and cultural center at the former Coggeshall School building located on …

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Public brainstorms ideas in tour of vacant Portsmouth school

Idea of arts and cultural hub revived by some residents

Posted

PORTSMOUTH — Several years ago, the Portsmouth Arts & Culture Committee pitched the idea of establishing an arts and cultural center at the former Coggeshall School building located on East Main Road in the south end of town.

Those plans were scuttled when The Aquidneck Island Christian Academy (AICA) ended up renewing its lease with the town, which owns the property. But when AICA closed its doors July 1 due to declining enrollment, some residents started thinking about reviving the idea of using the vacant building for arts and music.

Several of them were on hand Thursday, Nov. 8, during an open house to allow interested parties to view the property and to solicit public comments on its future development. The event was also intended to allow potential developers and community groups to interact in order to develop partnering strategies that could be part of formal proposal.

Rich Talipsky, the town’s director of business development, has issued a pre-solicitation notice to gather comments, questions and ideas before he puts together a formal request for proposals (RFP), which he expects will be issued by Jan. 1. The deadline for pre-solicitation comments and questions is Thursday, Nov.15.

“That’s in case people think there are things in there they can’t live with, or things that aren’t in there that they would like to see in the RFP,” said Mr. Talipsky. “It’s not a hard-and-fast cutoff, because after the 15th, then I hammer out the formal RFP so it doesn’t exclude people who have good ideas, but also does not make it too restrictive so people can’t fit within the box I’ve drawn.”

Mr. Talipsky has envisioned some type of cooperative management partnership between public and private entities for the space, although nothing is set in stone. One idea would be a shared cooperative work space, such as the new SIREN near the Green Grocer, but on a larger scale, he said. The space could include office and administrative space with day care and recreational facilities, he said.

“There are various models,” Mr. Talipsky said. “I don’t know what the right model is for this space, and that’s why I made the goals on the pre-solicitation notice broad enough to allow people to come in with innovative ways to be able to use this as a private/community space.”

Place for the arts?

Several people who attended last week’s open house said they were interested in exploring the space as a possible hub for the arts. One of them was Wayne Quackenbush, president of the Portsmouth Arts Guild.

“I’m interested in seeing if this space has potential use, either for the organization I’m with or a whole group of organizations,” said Mr. Quackenbush, whose group currently operates out of the parish hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “I’ve been trying to build a network for the last four years. I’m reaching out to Fall River, New Bedford, Narragansett. I’m trying to get people from all over, so the more space we have the more we can do.”

Another, Portsmouth High School art teacher Rose Escobar, says the multiple rooms in the building make it ideal for several different businesses to share the space with community groups, including those that need gallery space and music and drama performance space.

“It could really be a hub with a lot of versatility,” she said.

Cindy Killavey of Portsmouth Community Theater, which puts on plays in the building, said, “This is where our home is. We’ve got the storage upstairs for our costumes and it has a nice stage.”

Also touring the building was Tom Perrotti, the education director of Common Fence Music who represented that group on the Portsmouth Arts & Culture Committee. He said he might be interested in utilizing some of the space privately for music education or other programs.

Cynthia Fontaine, a holistic practitioner, said it’s difficult to find spaces that are suitable for her work. “We could get different practitioners together because I feel like we could really utilize this space as an arts/holistic center,” she said.

Mr. Talipsky, listening to their ideas in a hallway, said it “all sounds good until you figure out how to pay for it,” which the others agreed with. “But there’s a lot of (grant) money out there. The problem is, no money comes in without matching money.”

What about Common Fence?

Supporters of arts and music programming at Coggeshall don’t see any conflict with plans for a community-wide arts center at the Common Fence Point Community Center, which is currently undergoing a major renovation and expansion. 

They said the school building could utilize some of the classrooms for gallery space or arts and music lessons that could complement, rather than compete, with Common Fence Point. Perhaps a partnership could be established, they said.

Ms. Escobar said the Coggeshall building has more “breakout spaces” which makes it more suitable for a permanent art gallery with workspace. Ms. Killavey added that Coggeshall is more centrally located on Aquidneck Island than Common Fence, and is also on a bus route. 

On Tuesday, Conley Zani, president of the Common Fence Point Improvement Association, said she wasn’t too familiar with the Coggeshall space but that “the more arts we have in town, the better.”

However, Ms. Zani said she’d like to see the town “lean in” on the Common Fence Community Center “before something is built from the ground up.” The new building will have breakout spaces it never had before, she said, along with a finished basement and classroom.

“There’s just infinite opportunities for arts snd culture. I think the more the better, but I think we’re a resource in an underutilized building right now,” she said.

Coggeshall School

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