Christopher Harris: It's easy to understand both sides of Cooper Center saga

Aug. 18—A good story is always made better by the presence of a compelling villain. Sometimes, however, the bad guy has a good point.

Such is the case with the ongoing effort by the Pulaski County Library Board to sell a certain stately building on North Main Street, the eviction of those working inside it, and the public sentiment against it — which exists, I should note, for sympathetic reasons.

This is a difficult column to write because it's so personal for certain people. There are people I like personally very much, people whose efforts on behalf of the John Sherman Cooper Community Arts Center I commend and admire, who aren't going to like it because they feel hurt over the way that facility's fate has unfolded. And I can't blame them for that.

For years, a small group of very dedicated people has worked tirelessly to keep what used to be the Carnegie Community Arts Center, now Cooper, afloat. To say it's not been easy would be an understatement. Directors have come and gone. Key maintenance issues, such as malfunctioning air conditioners, have plagued daily operations. Bills, insurance, the Yellow Umbrella store and various food-related endeavors closing, key programs and tenants leaving ... it's been a struggle, but a labor of love for the people who work there and sit on its board.

I know. I've talked to them in the course of my coverage of this story. The Library Board has given them until the end of September to leave so that the building, the Cooper Center operates in, can be sold and the library can be relieved of that financial albatross around the neck. Those like Deb Stringer, the Cooper Center's current director, and board chair Chrystal Wilson — people who have put blood, sweat and tears into that place — have made it plain to me how meaningful this is for them, how unhappy they are about it, and how much they care about the Cooper and what it's meant to this community. This isn't just business; this is personal for them.

For them, I believe, the library board has turned out to be antagonists in this story. I get it, I do. But does that truly make them villains here?

The Carnegie Community Arts Center was conceived in 2008, following the move by the Pulaski County Public Library down Main Street to a new building. It was a good idea with a lot of promise. But it's seemed almost cursed over time. At one point, the City of Somerset stepped in to help the facility overcome some of its challenges, then quickly stepped back out. I've done so many stories on people becoming director who are no longer in that position — including Diane Giddens, twice.

I've also done numerous stories on various fundraisers the Carnegie/Cooper has held to help them with their always-accumulating costs of operation, such as "cookie walks" around Christmastime. These are fun ideas, but frankly, always felt outmatched by the challenge they faced. The Cooper Center needed more help than bake sales or cookie walks could give them.

It's part of running an arts center in a small town. Even in a major center, a non-profit arts center probably wouldn't be rolling in money; in a community like Somerset, where the demographics with interest in the kinds of things the Cooper offered are smaller, how much more so are the margins within which the facility must operate. Everybody needs money: every agency, every organization, every cause, every household — and we all have less and less of it each day to give, it seems. Someone is going to end up not getting what they need, and unfortunately, that description fits the Cooper Center.

I have a real affection for the Cooper Center building myself. I've acted in plays there with Flashback Theater Co., when they were a tenant. I spent hours in the children's department when I was a child and it was a library. I want to see it remain. I want to see it used. I don't want to see it torn down, and I don't want to see it fall into disrepair like the Virginia Cinema did.

And based on what I read on social media, others feel the same. Of course they do. The mission of the Cooper has been a worthy one, to help enrich our community through the arts, and the building has been a constant part of our lives for longer than anyone today can remember.

But I see resentment from the public toward the library for wanting to sell it. I see resistance to the idea that it might become another bar (imagine telling the average Somerset resident 15 years ago that one day people might think downtown had enough bars already!), and hopes that "somebody could do something" to keep it more or less as it is — though who that somebody might be, nobody really knows, and nobody is stepping up to be that person. Because, again, who has the time and money?

The truth is, I can't blame the library for wanting to get out from under the weight of the building, figuratively speaking. It's been a challenge for those running a non-profit arts center to keep things ship-shape, simply because of the limited nature of a non-profit arts center. If the people behind Carnegie/Cooper can't do it like it needs to be done, neither can the library board, which has its own constantly-operating facility to worry about. Paying for insurance, paying for upkeep, paying for utilities ... it's all a never-ending chore. Keeping the current library open each day is expensive enough without having to do the same for the building they left over a decade ago.

No one wants to see the building torn down. No one. And no one wants to see it become something unrecognizable either. Charlotte Keeney certainly doesn't. I know the library's director has grown to loathe seeing my name pop up on her phone because whenever I talk to her these days, her quotes are going to go in a story that upsets people who want good things for that building, and she gets flak as a result as the public face of the library, essentially representing the board and its decisions.

But Keeney wants those good things too. Of that, I can assure you. Just like I've had those conversations with the Cooper folks about how personal this is for them, I've had them with Keeney too. You can hear the frustration in her voice in talking about how complicated the situation is. How keeping the property as it stands, accessible for the whole community, is the ideal scenario, but it can't be guaranteed. How good people will get hurt by the demise of the arts center, but the library has no other practical choice.

It's one of those unfair things in life, no doubt about it. But consider the situation from the average family's standpoint. If you're trying to budget for your own household, and you have a money pit down the street that becomes your responsibility as well ... you have to find a way to make it someone else's problem, or your own household will suffer.

If I was the one who had been working to keep the Cooper Center going for years, I'd probably be fighting tooth and nail right now to keep it open. If I was on the library board, I'd probably be trying to sell it too. Neither side here is wrong. Both viewpoints are easy to understand.

According to Keeney (in contrast to the rumor mill), there is no buyer lined up yet for the Cooper Center building. I have my own ideas about it. I'd like to see it be a museum for the Lake Cumberland area, as well as accessible for many of the same people who utilized the Cooper. If I won the Powerball lottery tomorrow, I'd take the job on myself and make sure that the venue remained something that people would be happy with.

But I don't have the money. The library doesn't have the money. The Cooper Center doesn't have the money. It's not clear right now whether or not anyone will have the money to do anything with it at all.

I don't think there's a villain in this story. I think there are just a lot of characters doing what they feel they need to do from their own perspectives — and hoping, somehow, some way, that there's a happy ending of some kind.