We reported this week how the Town Council is considering different ideas for the former Chapel Hill Museum building at 523 E. Franklin St., including turning the building into a permanent arts venue. (See previous blog post here) We will have a fuller story in this Sunday's Chapel Hill News.

This morning we received a copy of professor elin o"Hara slavik's proposal, in which the UNC Arts Department offers to partner with the town in running the space, including offering slavik's services as a coordinator at no cost to the town. Here is a copy of that proposal for the program she suggests calling CHART (Chapel Hill Art).

After reading it, tell us what you think of it? Should the town make 523 E. Franklin a permanent arts space? Do you support a different use for the building, or do you think the town should sell it, as a citizens budget advisory committee recommended a few years ago. Tell us here or at editor@nando.com by Wednesday, May 4, and we'll publish your responses in the Sunday, May 8, issue of the Chapel Hill News.

CHART
(A Cultural Arts Space in Chapel Hill)

Proposal by elin o’Hara slavick
Distinguished Professor of Art, UNC, Chapel Hill
and Jeff York, Public Arts Administrator for Chapel Hill

March 14, 2011

523 East Franklin will be named CHART to be able to promote, brand and support the space as a location to be visited. It will be a collaborative project space between the town of Chapel Hill (Jeff York, Public Arts Administrator) and UNC’s Art Department (Professor elin o’Hara slavick), with a 3-year renewable contract/lease with an "out clause" for both parties

Well, here's one that flew below our radar. The Chapel Hill Town Council is now discussing turning the old Chapel Hill Museum (and before that the former town library) building at 523 E. Franklin St. into an arts incubator. 

The council, looking dog tired as tonight's meeting drags into its fourth hour, is being asked to consider creating the "523 Arts Incubator" to serve as permanent arts exhibition space and forum for other cultural programs.

The space would cost $78,500 to operate, plus maintenance, but the UNC Art Department would help support the effort, most notably by offering the services of professor elin o'hara slavik as a coordinator. She has already staged one successful show in the space and is now applyng for $25,000 in grants to support the incubator project.  

Council members Jim Ward and Penny Rich endorsed the idea, at least temporarily. Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt called it exciting, but wants to see other proposed uses for the building. "I can't be entirely convinced it's the right thing, because I don't think I have the information the way I need it," he said.

Gene Pease, who once headed a committee that recommended selling the building, said UNC should share the costs, including maintenance that will run "well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Matt Czajkowski went one step further. He pointed to numerous public comments the town has received that ask the the town to sell the building. "I don't know why it's not part of this discussion," he said.

The council sent the proposal back to parks and rec director Butch Kisiah to get better budget numbers, revise with more options for using the building and resubmit at a  future meeting.

I took another step towards my goal of meeting with each member of Chapel Hill's Town Council, by sitting down with the passionate Laurin Easthom last week.

We chatted about issues from the last session of council, like the Chapel Hill Museum and also some of the whoppers that will be big again this fall. 

"I don't really know what to make of it...they're very frustrated," Easthom said of the museum's demise. Museum staff are scheduled to meet with Easthom, who has been their unofficial liason to the council, and the mayor at a public meeting on August 26.

County funding for the Chapel Hill Public Library is another issue of concern for Easthom, who publicly questioned the fairness of the "framework for discussion" drafted between town and county leaders last week.

"I felt like if I didn't say anything, then it would be accepted," she said. "We've never talked about this on council."

Funding the operating costs of the library has been a point of discussion but, "all this other stuff and mutual exchanges had me wondering what people were thinking," she said. "It would sure be nice for them [the county] if that was the framework."

Easthom has petitioned town staff for an equity model for funding the library based on Chapel Hill's free public transit system, but she said so far she's gotten little response.

Development is always on the docket for discussion on the council, but Easthom said before additional projects are considered, more information on the capacity of Chapel Hill/Carrboro schools should be gathered.

"We always hear about traffic and the environment, but what about schools?" she said. "Looking at the fact that they're behind in capacity to build schools, I don't want to overburden the school system, we need to be responsive."

NOTE: Wednesday's Chapel Hill News has a story on a planned meeting between the town and Chapel Hill Museum. The meeting was postponed today, after we went to press. Here is an update:

A meeting between the town and Chapel Hill Museum planed for Wednesday has been postponed.

The museum board asked to move the meeting to some time after Aug. 23, Town Manager Roger Stancil said today.

The museum on East Franklin Street closed July 11 after not getting as much operating money as it requested for the new fiscal year. The museum board also wanted the town to begin absorbing the private museum into town government, as it had the Chapel Hill Public Arts Commission.

The museum board had asked for today’s scheduled meeting to discuss what went wrong between the two entities. The museum’s decision to close surprised the council. But museum co-chair Donald Boulton said he repeatedly communicated the importance of the town’s taking the museum over in order for it to stay open.

“I’m seeking clarification,” Boulton said Monday, “because I haven’t gotten any.”

Some local residents and the mayor of Morgnaton, N.C., who visited recently, have written letters criticizing the mayor and Town Council. Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt responded by saying museum officials rejected a deal that could have kept them open.

Civic leader Robert Seymour, a retired minister, asked community members to join him in donating money to the museum. But only six donations have come in, including from Seymour, totaling about $1,700, treasurer Stephen Rich estimated.

As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead.

-- "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead"

The Chapel Hill Museum is closing. It's really closing, says director Traci Davenport. (And no, we're not comparing the museum to a witch; the song just came to me as I was thinking about the museum last night.)

In an e-mail to Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and others, Davenport says a headline and article in last week's N&O was misleading. Although the museum was asking for a meeting with town officials, it was not in any last-minute effort to keep the museum open.

Donald Boulton, co chairman of the museum trustees, and Town Council member Laurin Easthom still hope there is a way to come out the meeting with the museum staying open. The East Franklin Street museum announced it would close after the town appropriated less than the $34,000 in operating support it requested for the new fiscal year and also would not absorb the museum into town government as museum officials said they were led to believe.

Davenport is unequivocal. 

"The physical museum will no longer be," she wrote the town in the June 24 e-mail. 

Instead the group is looking for a small office "to focus on continuing our award-winning education programs and creating a virtual presence for the museum to remain a resource to the community."

Its meeting with the town, now scheduled for July 21, is to coordinate a logical exit plan, Davenport said.

"It is important that we conduct this closing in the same responsible manner in which have operated these last 14 years," she wrote. "Town official assistance will allow this closing to take place in such a manner."

Got some reaction on Sunday's Editor's Desk column about my conversation with Ernie Dollar re the Chapel Hill Museum ("Does Chapel Hill care about its history?)

One reader thought it was particularly strong. That surprised me since all I said was that spending $16 million on a bigger library and not $49,000 on the museum didn't seem to make any sense. I was going for a thought piece that got at the broader issues Ernie was depressed about, which is that Chapel Hill is a hard place to sell history. 

Today a reader e-mailed this comment:

I read your article on the Chapel Hill Museum which I found interesting. I must admit, although I have heard of the Museum and know where it is located, I have never visited it and most of the people I know have never even heard of it.
I think it is fine if the Museum continues, even with town dollars, but I can't help but think, at the same time, of the human needs that go unseen and unheard of and unfunded in our community.

The reader, Marywinne Sherwood is on the board of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Eastern Piedmont-Orange County Club. She says the group has hired a director, will open its first club in Siler City on Wednesday, June 30, and is working toward opening a club in the Pine Knolls community of Chapel Hill. I pointed her to last Wednesday's story about the local Juneteenth celebration that reported on the Boys and Girls club effort here and asked her to keep in touch.

To be fair to the town, I asked staff writer Dave Hart and staff writer Jesse James DeConto if in their reporting on the museum they had understood the museum was to be absorbed into town government some day. Town Manager Roger Stancil said he could find nothing in writing to that effect. Neither Dave, Jesse nor I remember that from our various stories in the museum over the years either. Not to say that's not the case; just that none of us remembers it.   

Members of the Chapel Hill Museum board say they could have difficulty making it through the year unless the Town Council picks up their building costs in a renegotiated lease.

The museum leases the building at 523 E. Franklin St. from the town at minimal cost. But it's paying bills in installments and has taken about $20,000 in loans from board members to keep in operation. A toilet has been broken for months and needs to be upgraded to a commercial unit.

"Earlier in the year we were saying we thought we could make it to the end of the year," said treasurer Stephen Rich. "It's going to be tough."

Ironically the museum, which has only one full-time employee, director Traci Davenport, is serving record numbers of children in its education programs. "Johnnie Joins the Fire Department," a fire-prevention puppet show with the N.C. Jaycees Burn Center, reached nearly 2,000 students and community members in 2009. 

"We are not putting a date on things," Davenport said. "However, if the town cannot see  a way of making an investment in this building, the museum's future is hugely truncated."

We'll have more on the museum's financial problem in Wednesday's Chapel Hill News.