As published in the Gazette News on 24 Jul 2020
CONNEAUT – Conneaut Arts Center board member Pam Simpson remembers when Conneaut had an active artists’ guild with spaces scattered around the city where artists could stop in and paint whenever they wanted. Seeking to recreate that experience by turning basement space in its historic Kilpi Hall into an art studio, the Conneaut Arts Center (CAC) applied for help from the Ashtabula County Civic Development Corp (CDC).
Formally known as the Kilpi Hall Capital Improvements Project, the work to first waterproof the basement is among the CDC’s 2020 projects. Dedicated in 1899 as a Finnish cultural center, Kilpi Hall – the name stands for “shield” in Finnish – is a proud Buffalo Street reminder of Conneaut’s strong Finnish community. Finnish immigrants arrived in the early 1890s to work at Conneaut’s ore docks and the Bessemer Railroad, and Kilpi Hall was built to give them a place to gather, worship and socialize.
Later serving as a temperance hall, the building fell into disrepair until 1975, when local residents who wanted to start a community center proposed that the city buy it. The well-received campaign – residents purchased $10 “memberships” – led to the 1976 formation of Conneaut Community Center for the Arts which took over Kilpi Hall. For more than 40 years, the building has served the non-profit well. It is the site of music lessons, art classes, theater, art exhibits, social and community gatherings. Outdoor concerts are held at the Joan Newcomb Performing Arts Terrace, and art classes are held at the rear Annex.
Kilpi Hall’s basement has been used for those activities as well – mostly for what Simpson calls “odds and ends” such as Summer Arts Camp classes and the CAC’s annual “Christmas Treasures” sale of gently used holiday items. But it has always felt like a basement, and now the CAC board wants to give the visual arts program a dedicated home in the same way that the CAC’s Dance Department occupies the building’s second floor.
“We want to turn it into usable space,” Simpson said. “Space where we can invite artists to come in on their own and work. Space big enough to have things like drying racks, space that we can lock and where we can leave things out.” But infrastructure work comes first. Simpson calls it “Phase I” of the “Phase II” of actually turning the basement into usable space. In addition to waterproofing parts of the building’s basement, Phase I includes replacing sidewalks around the facility. “We can’t really make it into the usable space until we address the drainage issues,” Simpson said.
Ahead of the Phase I work, the CAC board has been busy working on other infrastructure repairs – gutters and sewer laterals among them. “We want to make sure we’ve done everything possible so that the foundation will be the last thing that needs to be done, and make sure that things that relate to the foundation are taken care of. After all, the building is more than 100 years old,” Simpson said.
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