Allan Appel Photo
The house has been shuttered since the summer.
Who will pay $53,000 to winterize the now shuttered John Slade Ely House arts center on Trumbull Street?
Is the city’s favored plan — to have Eductional Center for the Arts/ACES as a paying, renovating subtenant — viable?
Will ECA/ACES school hours make gallery and studio space with longtime arts groups a shared public gallery in name only?
Is it even legal for the JSEH’s trustee, Wells Fargo Bank, to turn over its trusteeship to a “dedicated fund” managed at the Greater New Haven Community Foundation?
Those gnarly legal and building maintenance questions emerged Thursday afternoon at a second status hearing on the fate of the John Slade Ely House, convened in Judge Frank Forgione’s North Branford Probate Court.
Artist Debbie Hesse and Friends of JSEHouse prez Jeanne Criscola at the status hearing.
The city, the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, and the state Attorney General’s office, which supervises not-for-profits statewide, all asked for another six weeks to work out details of a draft plan to preserve JSEH as an arts community center rather than allow Wells Fargo to dump it on the real-estate market.
The bank, which manages a trust that owns the house, expressed skepticism about the city/foundation proposed rescue plan. The bank said the trust is running out of money to preserve the house. It asked the judge for permission to sell it now rather than wait six weeks, in part because winter is coming and more trust-depleting money will have to be expended now to keep the old mansion safe.
Judge Forgione split the difference. He delayed a decision for three weeks and urged the parties to get together and start brass-tacks talking. Fast.
Wells Fargo, the fiduciary agent of the trust that controls the building, announced earlier this year its plan to sell the beloved arts center building. It stated that income from the trust fund is insufficient to keep pace with expenses and the principal is being regularly invaded. The center’s art-group tenants, other local artists, and New Haven’s Harp administration implored Probate Judge Frank Forgione to stop the sale.
Six weeks ago, at the first probate hearing, Forgione did delay the sale and urged the parties to find a solution. The community foundation then brought parties together in several meetings to discuss alternatives. (The parties themselves do not all agree on a plan.)
Thursday afternoon foundation Director of Grantmaking and Nonprofit Effectiveness Jackie Downing described a preliminary plan that she called viable and sustainable. Its main points include ECA/ACES move the Audubon Street’s visual arts department into the house and lease part of the space. ECA would occupy part of the second floor and the first floor gallery, and also use the basement in a sharing arrangement with the Brush and Palette Club and the Paint and Clay Club, long time tenants and, by the Ely House will, beneficiaries of the building.
“By bringing in ACES, we bring in school funds to do a major renovation. The Paint and Clay Club would continue to have its semi-annual exhibitions. The Friends of the John Slade Ely House [a new non-profit-in-formation created in wake of the crisis] would continue to curate the gallery space. Artspace might do residencies in the summer, when ACES is not there. Students could have mentors with the clubs, artists and curators,” Downing said.
Downing (pictured) called this the seed of a plan that could bring viability to the building’s maintenance and keep the spirit of the Ely will. “The viability is that ACES would open up vast financial possibilities [via rent] plus its history of renovation,” demonstrated in the reborn Little Theater and Mishkan Israel buildings that currently house ECA.
Judge Forgione noted that it could take at least a year and a half before ACES may secure state bond funds to renovate a building, especially a school building.
Wells Fargo attorney Aaron Bayer, of the Wiggin & Dana law firm, said “the plan has not persuaded the bank as trustee that it made sense.”
He called the sale of the house, which is universally agreed to be expressly permitted in the will, “not a capricious decision” but a painful one.
While ECA/ACES applies for money, who maintains the building for a year and half, Bayer asked?
The city’s representatives at the meeting — Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson and arts czar Andy Wolf — praised the sharing plan for combining the strengths of different community groups.
“We’re not guided by policy considerations” that guide the city, Bayer shot back.
He said the trust asks the bank to perpetuate fine arts in New Haven and to replicate the relationship of arts groups to the Ely house at other locations “when it’s impractical to maintain the house,” he added. The bank has offered to give out grants to local arts groups.
Another key sticking point for the bank in the community plan plan is that it asks to terminate the trusteeship, replaced by a “dedicated fund” at the community foundation.
An hour debate followed about whether such a move is legally permitted. Assistant Attorney General Karen Gano said it is.Bayer said he needs to discuss the matter with other members of the bank’s legal team.
Nemerson and Wolf, who said a sale of the building is “not an acceptable outcome” for the city.
Then he raised additional questions: What are the terms of the proposed ECA/ACES lease? What will prevent ACES from walking away if there’s no funding and we “end up here again in a few months, or worse?”
ACES’s ability to apply for bond funding is dependent on its acquiring a lease, said the group’s executive director, Tom Danehy, who was in attendance.
Another issue Forgione raised: the John Slade Ely House is not zoned for a school. Nemerson replied that public schools are only a block away. “The block is perfectly compatible with school use,” he said, and the city would help to make the zoning change happen.
Artist Debbie Hess ask if gallery parties could be held in what could technically become a school building. Would wine be served?
Danehy, from ECA/ACES, warned that his group could not be expected to spend an estimated $1 – 2 million for the longer term restoration unless it is sure of the details of the building’s use. Would the weekends, for example, be set aside for public use by the clubs and others only?
“For us to invest money, we’d need access to [the building’s] resources. We can’t give some of our resources and then be relegated to a corner,” he said.
Both sides said they learned from each other. Dreama Gassaway, who handles Wells Fargo’s national portfolio of not-for-profit properties, said many legal questions remain.
Forgione asked who in the shorter term will come up with the estimated $53,000 to get the building through the winter.
Nemerson said the city might help with a grant but, as trustee, the bank has money in the bank, as it were. So at this point it’s still Wells Fargo’s job, he said.
Gano suggested the Friends, if it can get back in the building, could begin fundraising efforts to meet that goal.
“If I set a date [for the another status hearing], it puts the pressure for people to talk. I wouldn’t want us to meet again and be right where we are,” he said.
After participants pulled out their electronic calendars and shuffled meetings and travel around, the judge ordered everyone to reconvene on Oct. 8, at 9 a.m.
Before that date, Karen Gano said the state will present a motion making the case for the legality of shifting a private trustee ship to a “dedicated fund” at the community foundation and thereby accomplishing the identical purpose of the trust.
Stay tuned.