Allan Appel Photo
Pacacha & Ely ex-curator Anna Bresnick at hearing.
After being closed for almost a year while facing an uncertain future, the John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art is about to get some lovin’ from a new landlord and new/old tenants.
The new landlord is ECA/ACES, the not-for-profit arts education organization that bought the house last month from the Wells Fargo Bank to use for part of the afternoon arts high school it runs, the Educational Center for the Arts.
The bank is the trustee for the Grace T. Ely Trust, which for 50 years allowed two venerable arts groups, the Brush and Palette Club and the Paint and Clay Club, to put on shows and have studio space there without rent or other financial obligations.
Those clubs are now on the verge of signing a licensing agreement with the Friends of the John Slade Ely House for Contemporary Art, a new group founded when the bank decided to sell and kick out the clubs. The clubs will rent or license from the Friends and the Friends will rent in a lease agreement from the new landlord ACES, which purchased the Trumbull Street building for $390,000.
Those agreements are on the verge of being signed, said Ronald Pacacha, a volunteer attorney for the Friends. As a result, “We’re all singing kumbaya,” he added.
Allan Appel Photo
John Slade Ely House.
The metaphorical song session unfolded Friday afternoon in the North Branford Probate Court chambers of Judge Frank Forgione. It was the seventh hearing convened in Judge Forgione’s courtroom since Wells Fargo decided to put the Ely house on the market. That action triggered widespread outrage among artists and formation of a group called the Friends of the John Slade Ely House. Artists — backed by the city and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven — sought to stop a sale that would eliminate the building as an arts center, and have made progress on a new deal to preserve that function.
The result will be that the doors well might open this summer for the clubs’ first shows and activities to continue for a year or a year and a half — the first of a three-phase plan — until ACES assembles the state bonding and permits and zoning and other municipal OKs to renovate the building. At that point, midway in 2017, the building closes, and reopens a year or so later with the Friends and clubs having worked out new sharing arrangements with the school and the needs of its visual arts students.
The lawyer for the Grace T. Ely Trust, Aaron Bayer reported to the judge that the trust had also on April 5 approved a grant of $30,000 to the Friends and $4,625 to the Paint and Clay Club and $4,300 to the Brush Palette Club.
Those grants, midwived by Jackie Downing of the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, emerged from last month’s probate hearing. At that hearing the newly formed Friends and clubs, neophytes at fundraising, asked for special status— since the clubs are named in the will — to receive grants from the trust to defray rent and expenses as now paying tenants in the building whose landlord is now ECA/ACES.
Bayer said that the three groups had submitted detailed applications and a “good and smooth working relationship” is ongoing between the trust and the three groups.
“Are the services of the court no longer needed?” Judge Forgione asked.
“Not exactly,” replied the clubs’ lawyer, Ian Bjorkman.
What still remained an issue in Bjorkman’s representation of the clubs’ interests is whether in the future the clubs, named in the will as examples of the types of activities to be supported by the trust but not “mandated” to receive it, should not be guaranteed the support in the coming years.
“The clubs are not asking for an order in any [specific] amount, just that they be recognized for special consideration in the will,” he said.
“Do I have the jurisdiction?” Forgione replied. The judge seemed loathe to accept the assignment but, if it was asked of the court, he wanted to see briefs.
“The trustee has said [many times],” responded Bayer, that “the clubs have a unique relationship, but the will gives discretion to the trustee, which makes sense. I’m reluctant to accept an order that would pull us back into court.”
Brush and Palette president Diane Chandler and Paint & Clay’s Jeanne Ciravolo.
Bjorkman agreed to have a conversation with the bank’s attorneys before a motion for a formal hearing on the matter.
“I’ll issue something very benign, that at this time the parties have indicated that the court will not hold any additional hearings,” Judge Forgione said.
“It is good to see the community come together. Congratulations. A great result,” he added.
Brush and Palette Club President Diane Chandler said, “I’m glad we’ll be getting back in, but it still feels uncertain abut finding space during” the phase two renovation.
ECA/ACES Executive Director Thomas Danehy said that his group has already cleaned up the basement, added railings, and made other safety improvements.
Pacacha said it’s likely the first activity of the clubs in the new building will be this summer or early fall.
Pacacha and Danehy predicted that the lease by the Friends and the licensing agreements between the Friends and the clubs would be formally signed as early as next week.
Downing also reported that the Greater New Haven Community Foundation has granted the Friends a $5,500 challenge grant to jump-start their individual fundraising. She urged them to participate in the upcoming Great Give.