Cultural Arts Foundation set to purchase Hardin Center, Music Center from city

The Gadsden Cultural Arts Foundation is poised to purchase the Mary G. Hardin Center for Cultural Arts on Broad Street and the Music Center at Temple Beth Israel on Chestnut Street from the City of Gadsden.

Those buildings are now leased for $1 a year from the city, which is responsible for maintaining and insuring them. Such agreements are no longer feasible for the city from a personnel or financial standpoint, Mayor Craig Ford said during Tuesday’s pre-council meeting, and efforts are being made to get completely out of them.

Ford said when officials at the Cultural Arts Foundation heard that, they approached the city about buying the buildings and offered $30,000 for both.

The City Council will vote on the transaction June 13, and if it signs off, the hope is that the sale will be finalized within 30 days.

“The previous two administrations had the philosophy of ‘own buildings and lease them for a dollar,’ ” Ford said, “and we maintain them and put them on our insurance policy. If an air conditioning or a door breaks, we fix it.

“We’re running short on employees, and we don’t have the manpower to keep these buildings up,” he said. “We’ve had some of these facilities call us when a door jams and say to our building department, ‘We’d like for you to come fix our doors,’ and they’re paying us a dollar a year for rent.”

Ford said the city and the Cultural Arts Foundation agreed on the price, and the foundation’s annual appropriation in the city budget ($335,000 in each of the last two years) will be increased by $30,000 in Fiscal 2024 “to help the transaction on their books.”

Tom Banks, the foundation’s director, said in an email that the group is “delighted” with the prospective sale.

“We are excited about the opportunity to solidify the permanence of our programs in these two spaces that provide ideal locations for us,” he said. “We are developing a new master plan for renovating and reimaging the best ways to use our facilities, so it makes sense to us to own the buildings that we plan to continue to invest in with capital improvements.

“We are very grateful to Mayor Ford for being receptive to our request to own the properties and for the City of Gadsden’s sustained support as our public partner,” Banks said. “We look forward to the foundation’s relationship with the city enduring for many years to come as we continue to provide cultural services and opportunities to the community. There are many exciting things happening in Gadsden and we are proud to be part of that forward momentum.”

City officials said the foundation has agreed to be responsible for any major maintenance issues until the sale is finalized, with the city helping if needed. Afterward, all maintenance and insurance will be on the foundation’s tab.

Director of City Services Tena King said maintenance costs for the Hardin Center run about $300,000 a year and Ford, who owns an insurance agency, said taking the buildings off the city’s policy will save about $8,000 every three months.

“I’m trying to save the city $200,000 to $250,000 on insurance each year,” the mayor said. “And we’ve spent $80,000 on heating and cooling in buildings we own in the last six months.”

Ford said the city owns buildings “I didn’t know we had,” with the accompanying maintenance obligations. The goal is to get away from that — “There are other buildings we’re doing this with as we speak,” the mayor said — although it might take several years because of the various lengths of the lease contracts.

The Hardin Center opened in 1990 at the location of the old Belk-Hudson store downtown and has become the city’s cultural hub with its various exhibits, performances and functions. It also houses the Gadsden Community School for the Arts and the Downtown Dance Conservatory, and the Imagination Place kids’ activities area.

The Etowah Youth Orchestras relocated in 2012 to the former home of Gadsden’s Temple Beth Israel Jewish congregation. That congregation dissolved in 2010, and the building was gifted to the city the following year.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Gadsden Cultural Arts Foundation to buy buildings from city