Chelmsford Center for the Arts campaigns for town funding, faces shutdown

Cameron Morsberger
5 min readMar 26, 2022

New management and office spaces could impact CCA’s future

March 26, 2022 — Members of Resident Arts Organizations and other supporters rally to support keeping Chelmsford Center for the Arts in the Old Town Hall building in Chelmsford Center. (SUN/Julia Malakie)

CHELMSFORD — The Chelmsford Center for the Arts may be under new management and effectively downsized in the coming months, after years of advocating for funding through the town budget.

Despite its best efforts, all the CCA has received is “lip service,” according to Executive Director Susan Gates.

Gates plans to retire from her role in May, after leading the center since its founding 13 years ago, and had hoped to find a replacement director. But instead of posting a job opening, Town Manager Paul Cohen issued a request for proposals, or RFP, two weeks ago to find a booking management company to take over Gates’ responsibilities.

Additionally, Chelmsford Housing Authority Executive Director David Hedison is proposing he move his own administrative offices into the CCA building in order to create affordable housing units in its current location at McFarlin Manor, which is now preparing for renovations, according to Cohen.

Hedison’s offices and 20 employees would occupy the first two floors of the CCA, leaving the top floor as a performance space, Cohen said. But the ground floor, containing the center’s Cabaret Cafe club and Gates’ office, as well as the second floor, which houses three artist-rented studios, a gallery and a seminar room where musicians offer lessons, would no longer be available for the CCA.

The CCA, a visual and performing arts center that took over the old Town Hall in November 2009, received Community Preservation funds for renovations at the time, but had to cover a $21,000 utility fee, which Gates said the organization was able to do. When the center was hurt by the pandemic, the Select Board granted $335,000 in American Rescue Plan Act recovery funding last June to sustain its operations.

Gates said she has long been an advocate for annual funding from the town budget, and continues to ask for $200,000 of the town’s current $142 million budget — a potential 0.141% allocation. Though the CCA earns money through its rented studios, Gates said the organization still needs to pay its full-time technical director.

For Gates, this is “not a volunteer job,” and that, despite pandemic-related setbacks, the CCA’s problem is not its management system but rather its lack of town funding.

“This manufactured crisis came up because COVID just about killed us,” Gates said. “Somebody had the bright idea that somehow there was some management company that would come and manage the building. This isn’t about just managing a building.”

In September, the town’s ​​general fund free cash — an undesignated balance of funds left over from the prior year budget — amounted to $5.67 million, which Gates said Cohen encouraged her to look into. But the CCA never obtained funding from free cash.

Cohen said committing an annual $200,000 to the CCA, primarily for the organization’s two full-time, salaried employees — Gates and the technical director — would be difficult in the current “inflationary environment” and may put constraints on the rest of the budget. For now, he is hesitant to support any such funding allocation.

“I need $39 million to put into the town’s roads because they’re in a deficient condition, and I’ve got 28 buildings to maintain,” Cohen said. “I am not going to engage in hypothetical situations until I know what options are considered after the proposal deadline.”

The deadline for proposals is Friday, April 1, Cohen said, and a couple of booking companies have already obtained RFP paperwork.

Gates claims that Cohen promised her on two separate occasions that the executive director role would be posted in January, but she said he “didn’t do it” but rather “blindsided” her with the RFP and Hedison’s interest in sharing the facility with the CCA.

“Out of the blue, this cockamamie thing about an RFP came up, and that was bad enough, because nobody said anything. Nobody told me. I kind of found out about it,” Gates said. “If they hired the person using the ARPA money that was appropriated and given specifically to hire someone, we wouldn’t be doing this little dance, would we?”

Cohen asserted Gates was fully aware of the RFP, and provided email receipts from Feb. 15 in which he asked for Gates’ thoughts on the draft CCA RFP.

“I was discussing with the board an RFP well over a month ago, so there was no blindsiding,” Cohen said. “That’s an unfair characterization.”

A short demonstration was staged outside of the North Road building Saturday in an effort to “save our CCA,” Gates said. One of the center’s resident artists designed signs that were held.

The Select Board will decide, after the April 5 election, whether to approve transferring the office space to Hedison, move forward with a proposal from a potential management company, or allocate annual funding to the CCA from the town budget.

Both Select Board Chair Virginia Crocker Timmins and Select Board member Pat Wojtas are seeking re-election, with a challenge from newcomer Erin Drew.

Timmins stated during the League of Women Voters candidates’ forum Thursday that losing the CCA would be “heart-wrenching” and that the CCA should be part of conversations concerning potential management bids.

She added that the fate of the center most likely rests in the hands of the Select Board, who will vote on the proposals at Cohen’s recommendation, and that she already has heard a variety of interesting ways to support the CCA.

Gates said Timmins — as well as Wojtas, who also participated in the forum — failed to shed any light on the funding issue and did not mention the ARPA money they approved for the center last year.

Timmins said Friday the board has yet to discuss the CCA and its future, so she has yet to see any proposed funding or other solutions to keep the center up and running.

“I think Paul trying to keep people informed just turned into an emotional reaction that now they feel threatened, and I understand that completely,” she said. “I don’t know if (the town) can sustain $200,000 a year, if that’s the number.”

Gates is frustrated over the perceived lack of support and communication from the town, which she said gains immeasurable value from the CCA.

“I’ve been chipping away at it for 15 years, but we’ve finally gotten to the point where I had money to replace myself with, which I wanted to do anyway. I’m 69 years old,” Gates said. “So, we got the money, and then the tables were turned.”

Originally published at https://www.lowellsun.com on March 26, 2022.

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Cameron Morsberger

Reporter @ The Lowell Sun. Covering local government, breaking news, interesting people and issues impacting our community.