The School Town of Munster has the money to purchase the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, but it doesn’t have the mechanism to continue with events.
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 its Monday night meeting. The resolution is the first step in what’ll likely be a long process as attorneys for both entities hammer out the details, STM Superintendent Bret Heller said.
Heller insisted the district wouldn’t have to go to a referendum on the purchase, even though Indiana law requires school districts to bring any bond issues on projects larger than $10 million before the voters in a referendum. Instead, it would use its 2024-2026 Facility Project mortgage bond, which is also being used to fund several other large construction and maintenance projects, he said.
STM is mainly looking at purchasing the building and seven acres on which it sits so that it can move its administration to a better facility; the current administration building, built in 1980, has “components that don’t work when they’re supposed to and components that work when they’re not supposed to,” and topped the list of buildings in the system that need a major overhaul at the very least, Heller said. But two of the CVPA’s mainstays — South Shore Arts and the Northwest Indiana Symphony — could have synergies with STM’s music and Arts programs that the schools would like to keep.
“This is a long and complex process,” he said. “We’re doing our due diligence. We believe acquiring the property would have a number of benefits.”
The CVPA theater, which currently houses Theatre at the Center, for example, would come in handy for performances while the Munster High School Auditorium undergoes a near-total renovation in the next few years, Heller said. It could also be used for elementary and middle-school performances, he said.
As well, art students could take classes through South Shore Arts, he said.
“It will be an expansion of opportunities and new opportunities for students, staff and the community,” he said.
Since the administration — which may also bring its information technology and Academic Achievers departments to the new CVPA offices from a separate administration and conference building — would need only 8,000 to 10,000 square feet of the 72,660 square-foot Center, it’s conceivable that SSA and the Symphony could stay without overlap, as could the gallery and SSA Gift Store, Heller said.
What won’t stay, however, is any sort of catered events, such as weddings and other banquets, mostly because they require a liquor license, with which schools aren’t allowed to deal. Under state law, the sale, possession, or use of alcohol or controlled substances is prohibited on school grounds or at school-related events.
Trama Catering currently provides catering for CVPA.
If a theater guild proposes to rent the theater space and handle all the details around production, STM would consider it, Heller said. But because Theatre at the Center often includes alcohol in conjunction with its performances, it likely won’t be staying, either.
“There’s a full-time (theater) staff employed by the (Community Foundation of Northwest Indiana), and (CFNI doesn’t) want to be in it,” Heller said. “And we don’t want to be in the events business.”
Heller said STM appears to be the only entity with which CFNI is engaging, but other entities were interested in the property. 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, but 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.
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.
