TELLURIDE ARTS WINS OUR TOWN GRANT FROM THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
Arts-based Community Development Investment for Telluride, Colorado.
Telluride Arts is one of 89 National Endowment for the Arts Our Town projects selected nationwide
TELLURIDE, Colorado. June 14, 2017
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu announced 89 awards totaling $6.89 million supporting projects across the nation through the NEA’s Our Town program. Telluride Arts is one of the recommended organizations for a grant of $50,000 to support the design phase of the Telluride Transfer Warehouse. The NEA received 274 eligible applications for Our Town this year and will make grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000.
“The arts reflect the vision, energy, and talent of America’s artists and arts organizations,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support organizations such as Telluride Arts to cultivate vitality in their communities through the arts.”
“This funding from the National Endowment for the Arts is through the Our Town initiative, which “supports projects that contribute to the livability of communities and place the arts at their core”. The Telluride Transfer Warehouse project does just that, and will be a spectacular space where the Telluride community will gather at the heart of our community. Thanks to this investment from the NEA, the design will be perfected through an engaged community process.”
Kate Jones, Director, Telluride Arts
Built in 1906, the Telluride Transfer Company Warehouse is an imposing, two-story, sandstone structure that is the one of the most important buildings in the Telluride National Historic Landmark District. The building served as the livery barn, warehouse, and office for the Telluride Transfer Company until the 1950s. The building remained in use as commercial storage and as a filling station until 1978. Its roof collapsed in the spring of 1979, and it has been allowed to deteriorate since that time.
The Telluride Transfer Warehouse stands on a property that was, until recently, owned by the Zoline family, whose patriarch is the founder of Telluride Ski Resort. The building is located on one of the most iconic sites in Telluride that is one of the last infill development parcel in town. The restoration of this historical part of town will effectively activate a vibrant cultural corridor linking the ski resort and Mountain Village Gondola with Downtown Telluride.
The multi-stage and multi-faceted effort to secure the Warehouse for public use, and the plan for adaptive reuse as a center for the arts, began in late 2014 when the new owner asked Telluride Arts to take the lead on the project. Working closely with the Town of Telluride and the property owner, Telluride Arts brokered a deal that has secured it as a public space in perpetuity, and will culminate in the total restoration of the crumbling National Historic Landmark.
The vision for the Warehouse is to create inspired, elegant, flexible spaces that support programming that elevates the intellectual and cultural life in Telluride.
The building is a spectacular blank canvas, encased in a National Historic Landmark that is standing like a sentinel at the heart of our increasingly cosmopolitan mountain town. With a 6,000 sq ft footprint, the building is relatively small in scale but will have a major impact on the future of Telluride. It will be a tangible expression of the Arts District; Welcoming, inclusive, and world-class, hospitable to local artists and organizations and internationally acclaimed programming.
The project will re-engage our local community in the final planning of the space, to work with an acclaimed architect for space and programming design that are mutually informed. The architect selection process has been completed ahead of schedule, with LTL out of New York, selected as the winning firm.
In this phase of the project, Telluride Arts will commission an artist or artist team to produce digital media that captures the history of the Warehouse and sets the stage for its future. Full details will be released this month.
For a complete list of projects recommended for Our Town grant support, please visit the NEA web site at arts.gov. The NEA recently relaunched the creative placemaking web page which has lots of resources.
To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring17.
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Telluride Arts is a non-profit arts agency founded in 1971 that elevates a culture of the arts in the Telluride Arts District. Find the Telluride Arts offices across from the library at 135 West Pacific Avenue, or online at www.telluridearts.org, at Telluride Arts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or call at 970.728.3930.