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Spokane Art School selling building

Jim Kershner
Staff writer
January 8, 2008

The Spokane Art School on North Howard in Spokane is framed by a sculpture outside the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Monday, Jan. 7, 2007. Financial pressures are forcing the school to sell the building it has occupied for 23 years. (CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON / The Spokesman Review)

One of Spokane’s longtime cultural landmarks – the Spokane Art School – is going up for sale.

Not the organization, just the building. The Spokane Art School can no longer afford the building it has occupied since 1984. This 10,000-square-foot brick building at 920 N. Howard has long been one of Spokane’s most visible arts presences.

“It’s a drag, to be blunt,” said Karen Mobley, city arts director, and longtime observer of the city’s arts scene.

The Spokane Art School will continue to offer classes at other venues – artists’ studios, for instance – and it is pursuing a partnership with other area arts organizations, including the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, or MAC.

Ann Glynn, head of the Spokane Art School, said the school is “not closing, but re-venturing.”

However, the Spokane Art School’s board finally came to the decision, after 18 months of struggling with the issue, to sell its most visible asset.

In the end, Glynn said, it came down to one insurmountable problem: Federal and state support for the arts has been dwindling, and local support has been stretched too thin. Mobley said almost every nonprofit arts organization in town has been plagued with the same problem.

Enrollment in art classes has also been down over the last four years. By putting the building up for sale – which should happen within two weeks – the Spokane Art School will be able to stabilize its financial situation, said Glynn. The school has built up plenty of equity in the building.

The advantages of selling? Far lower overhead, the ability to put money into the organization’s investments and endowments, and more flexibility when it comes to partnering with other organizations.

Mobley said it could give the school a “more nimble structure, compared to having the large-scale overhead of a building.”

The disadvantages? The lack of, essentially, a place to call home.

“But we think we can re-create that in different ways,” said Glynn.

She said that an affiliation with the MAC is a possibility, although the exact nature hasn’t been worked out. In addition, the Spokane Art School will continue in its original mission of “providing opportunities to explore art in classroom settings, support emerging artists in the region and remain a vital resource to the Inland Northwest artistic community.”

The school plans to remain in the building long enough to finish winter quarter classes through March 15. After that, the school will continue to offer classes and programs, but in many different studios and classrooms around the area. The Spokane Art School has an annual budget of about $450,000 and a staff equivalent to about three or four full-time employees. The school relies heavily on volunteers.

The Spokane Art School was founded in 1969 by the Junior League of Spokane to provide fine arts education for youth. The school operated out of a basement office for many years, but in 1981, a donor gave them this former plumbing-and-heating-company building on North Howard.

After extensive remodeling, the building opened in 1984 to become what its executive director at the time called “a true visual arts center for the Inland Northwest.”

Jim Kershner can be reached at (509) 459-5493 or by e-mail at jimk@spokesman.com.

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