If it weren’t for Joe Trama, Chef Hugo Francisco may never have had the pleasure of making sure diners at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts left the venue “with full tummies and a smile on their face.”
His wife – Marie Arteaga, Trama Catering’s general manager – said Francisco always tells people his gratitude for the opportunity Trama gave him when he hired in as a dishwasher 33 years ago can never be repaid in money.
“You repay it with hard work and loyalty,” she told the Munster Town Council at its meeting Monday night. When Arteaga and Francisco pulled their 50 employees together to tell them that Trama may be closing if the School Town of Munster ends up buying the CVPA, they told them they understood if anyone needed to find other employment since they have to take care of themselves, she said.
Not a one said they were leaving, Arteaga tearfully told the council. They will stay with Trama “until the very end.”
“That is loyalty,” Arteaga, the first of at least 15 remonstrators at the meeting, said. “That is family, that is special, and that is what Munster would be losing if (STM) purchases CVPA and shuts us down.”
Residents, patrons and former employees of the various entities in the CVPA came to implore the Town Council to “do something” to stop the School Town from purchasing the 72,660 square-foot building. STM, which said it would purchase the building using a mortgage bond that wouldn’t raise residents’ property taxes, would move its administrative and IT offices as well as its Academic Achievers program into 8,000 to 10,000 square feet, then possibly allow South Shore Arts, the Northwest Indiana Symphony and the gallery and gift shop to continue on, STM Superintendent Bret Heller told the Post-Tribune previously.
But getting rid of the Theatre at the Center and the catering business would devastate the arts community, not just in Northwest Indiana but all around Chicagoland, several said. One of them, Pat Cramer said that when she moved to Lansing, Illinois from Chicago, her friends at first asked her “Why are you moving to the South suburbs? There’s nothing there.”
“So I had them come to (CVPA). They loved it, and six years later, they ended up moving here themselves,” Cramer told the council. “We don’t want to become a cultural desert.
“Each one of you has an opportunity to be a hero, here.”
Sarah Solis, a St. John resident, said if it weren’t for the CVPA, two of her three sons – Julian and Gabriel – would’ve never gotten to play on a stage with members of a professional symphony. She moved her family to St. John from DeMotte “because of that building,” she said.
Alex Coccia, a Munster resident, told the council he found out Sunday from his wedding planner that his wedding this summer could be in jeopardy if the sale goes through before then.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to get married at (CVPA), so I hope we don’t have to cancel,” Coccia said. “And (our wedding planner) was shaken up because now, her livelihood will be affected.”
Another remonstrator, William Shue, said CFNI should be “utterly ashamed of themselves.”
“The Calumet Region is a vast wasteland of culture, and you guys are caught in the middle,” he said. “(If CVPA goes), what’s left in this whole area? I hope there’s a good solution.”
Heller said STM appears to be the only entity with which CFNI is engaging, but other entities were interested in the property. Some Munster residents wondered how STM would continue to pay for such a building; one woman pointed out that STM’s student population is slated to decrease by 10% over the next six years.
“If we wanted to increase school spending, it feels like the same pot of money,” she said.
“If STM buys this, I’ll never vote for a referendum again,” resident Crista Zivanovic said after the meeting.
In an email the Post-Tribune obtained dated March 10, Munster Town Councilman Chuck Gardiner, R-3, said that he and Munster Clerk-Treasurer Wendy Mis had preliminary discussions with the CFNI — a subsidiary of Powers Health — about the town purchasing the property. Still, since the discussions took place in the latter part of 2023, the two felt larger conversations about it should wait until the new council was seated in 2024.
Nevertheless, he said the CVPA under the town’s umbrella could expand upon the center’s arts and theater programs as well as create a program for seniors and offer meeting space and conference space to Munster residents.
“There’s a lot of history with the arts and theater — iconic things that have been built up for Munster, and we’d like to keep those things here,” Gardiner told the Post-Tribune previously. “We’ve talked with both groups, and we have a good history of working together, so while we don’t want to hold (STM) back, we want to be good partners and do whatever we can do to keep those programs into the future.”
Purchasing the CVPA — which is valued at $10.7 million, according to its 2023 Lake County assessment — would also allow STM to “create a preschool program if the need or the state requires them to administer preschool,” Gardiner said in the email.
Completed in 1989, the Center for Visual and Performing Art was built by the Community Foundation, founded by the Donald Powers family. The CVPA sits on the site of the former James F. Lanier Elementary School, which was founded as the Munster School in 1913, according to the Munster Historical Society.
The STM School Board of Trustees voted 3-0-2 — with Board President John Doherty and member Ingrid Schwartz Wolf abstaining because they serve on boards affiliated with Powers Health — to approve a resolution to purchase the Powers Health-owned Center at 1040 Ridge Rd. during that meeting. The vote was only to get the process off the ground, and until there’s a definitive plan in place, the board won’t vote on it – a point Superintendent Bret Heller reiterated Tuesday afternoon.
“Currently, there are no intentions to take board action regarding a final agreement for STM’s potential purchase of the property during our April 8 meeting,” Heller said in an email. “Although discussions on this matter have been ongoing, we are still in the process of resolving various details and addressing unanswered questions.”
Don Fesko, who is CNFI COO, Powers Health CEO and Powers’ grandson, has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.