Residents seek voice in Arts Center future

In its 2010-11 season, the Longboat Key Center for the Arts, a Division of Ringling College of Art and Design, attracted 2,932 people to its programs, which included lectures, workshops, concerts, openings, classes and more.

But despite the revenue generated from programs, along with memberships, the numbers don’t add up for the Arts Center, according to Executive Director Jane Buckman. The Ringling College has been the Arts Center’s primary source of support since a 2007 merger, Buckman said at a Feb. 16 neighborhood meeting.

“That can’t be sustained,” Buckman told a crowd of approximately 25 residents. “We need to create programming that will allow us to support ourselves, but we also want to be good neighbors.”

The Ringling College has a plan for the Arts Center’s future that would culminate in the 2016 completion of a new two-story building that could be used for flexible retreat space.

“The idea is having workshops where artists could come in and provide various types of programs within a cultural framework,” Buckman said. “That could give us the opportunity to have people not only from Florida … but what could be a national, or even international audience.”

But several residents of the Longbeach Village, where the Arts Center is located, said that they wanted a stronger voice in the Arts Center’s future. They expressed disappointment that no Village residents were appointed to the Arts Center’s new Advisory Council and decried the fact that the Longbeach Village Association hasn’t been able to hold its monthly meetings in the Arts Center since the merger. At one point in the meeting, Buckman said that Arts Center memberships were about half what they once were, with many residents expressing dissatisfaction with the Ringling merger — a fact that Village resident Corinne Ragheb cited when she shared her thoughts on the Arts Center.

“It’s very telling that you only have about half the membership that you used to have,” she said. “Before you sink money into this, perhaps you should try to get some of that friendliness back that you used to have.”

But Christine Meeker Lange, Ringling special assistant to the president for media and community relations, pointed out that it was the Arts Center that first approached the Ringling College about the merger. She compared the relationship between the organizations to that of a couple in which both individuals have children from a prior marriage and need time to blend their worlds.

“I would ask you to be patient with us and let’s start dating because we have to start somewhere,” Lange said.

Longbeach Village Association Past President/Acting President Michael Drake urged other attendees to remember that the plan is now only conceptual. But he warned Ringling officials that the second story of the building was the “elephant in the room.”

“I think that’s gonna be your biggest pushback,” he said.

Another Village resident worried about the parking for the plan and said that cars were parked throughout his street during the most recent Arts Center event. The plan calls for reducing parking to 61 spaces from its current 65, with bicycle racks added to offset the lost spaces.

Toward the end of the meeting, Ringling officials agreed that the Arts Center would host the Village Association’s March 7 meeting and share further plans with residents.

The Ringling College will likely submit plans to the Longboat Key Planning Zoning & Building Department in March in which it will seek an amendment and extension of its existing site plan, which the Longboat Key Town Commission approved in 2003, four years before the Ringling College and the Arts Center merged. The plan was later amended in 2009, extending the deadlines for the issuance of a building permit for plans to June 30, 2012, and for the issuance of a certificate of occupancy to June 30, 2013.

Room for retreat?
What exactly does the Ringling College mean by “retreat space”?

Arts Center Executive Director Jane Buckman said that the term is still being “loosely defined” but could bring 15 to 20 people for master workshops that could run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. anywhere from one to five days. The retreat space would not have sleeping arrangements but Buckman said that the Arts Center could work with hotels by arranging for block reservations.