WORCESTER—More than eight years ago, Creative Hub Worcester started fundraising with the goal of renovating 2 Ionic Ave. into an arts center. The nonprofit just announced renovations of the building, which was constructed in 1914, will start in the spring.
“Steeped in local history, this $10 million historical renovation project will breathe new life into the site of the former Ionic Ave Boys Club, a community anchor since 1914,” the nonprofit posted to its Instagram page.
The renovation is expected to take until 2025, when doors will open, according to the post.
Executive Director Laura Marotta founded Creative Hub Worcester with Stacy Lord after meeting through the Massachusetts Art Education Association 10 years ago.
Marotta and Lord are both artists and art educators, according to Marotta, who told The Worcester Guardian Wednesday that they are both passionate about being art educators, but wanted to bring art outside of the classroom and reach a broader audience.
“We decided we wanted to start a business and start a community center where we could bring people to do all kinds of art,” Marotta said, “not just in a classroom or school, but in all different kinds of ways to partner with and work with creative people, entrepreneurs, artists, hobbyists, [and] makers.”
Marotta said she and Lord fell in love with the 2 Ionic Ave building when they were first introduced to it in 2016
“It’s in a perfect location,” Marotta said. “It’s a really fantastic amount of space…it was a community center for over 100 years and it just feels like it deserves to be revitalized to become something similar for the community again.”
Since the process of revitalizing the Ionic Ave building started, Marotta said she’d learned a lot, specifically that big development projects like it generally tend to take somewhere around a decade to get completed from the time they’re ideated. Marrota gave the Hanover Theater and the BrickBox Theater as examples.
Marotta called being able to announce the groundbreaking surreal.
“It’s just exciting to know that we’ve been persistent and resilient and that has paid off,” Marotta said.
One of the biggest challenges along the way has been fundraising and making sure that different sources of funding they’ve secured fit together in a way that makes sense in terms of cash flow.
What’s kept Marotta and Lord going during the years it has taken to get the project off the ground is the connections they’ve made with creative people and knowing that the space would allow them to add more space and resources for artists in the city.
While they have been working to get the funding together for the Ionic Ave location, Creative Hub Worcester has been operating out of 653 Main St.
“We wanted to be able to start doing some arts programming,” Marotta said. “We knew this project was going to take a significant amount of time to complete.”
Having the space on Main Street allowed them to open an after-school program, host resident artists, and have classes, workshops, and maker nights.
Marotta said the goal right now is to keep the Main Street location open in addition to the Ionic Ave location.
“The things that are happening there are in a great location in terms of visibility and it was built out to be a youth arts space so ideally we’d be able to keep that space as well,” Marotta said.
The Main Street location is around 4,000 square feet, while the Ionic Ave location is 36,000 square feet.
The Ionic Ave location will allow the Hub to have a 4,000-square-foot event space that can hold upwards of 200 people, according to Marotta.
“So we’re really excited to be able to host really big events, we’ll be able to have a gallery space, we will be able to do artisan markets,” Marotta said.
Marotta and Lord run the stART on the Street markets along with Tina Zlody which feature more 250 artists and crafters on Park Ave every year.
With the Ionic Avenue location, “we’ll be able to have those vendors and other artisans and makers come on a monthly basis,” Marotta said.
The new location will also have incubator spaces and artist studios, art-making experiences, and a community arts classroom, according to the Hub’s website
Renovating the former Ionic Ave Boys Club building will involve rehabilitating and updating the building’s electrical, HVAC, and plumbing systems and adding an elevator. Due to the historic nature of the building, all of the rehabilitations they make will have to mimic the original character of the building.
As the groundbreaking date nears for 2 Ionic Ave, Marotta said she is most looking forward to working with and seeing creative people and entrepreneurs grow and work together and find space for their passion.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
