Wesleyan: Proposed fine arts center a ‘resource not only for Middletown but for all of central’ CT

Wesleyan University is preparing to renovate a building just east of its main campus as a fine arts center, and hopes it will build stronger connections between its arts students and Middletown residents.

“We see this site as a really excellent place to invite the Middletown community in for our performances and our art exhibitions,” said Roger Michael Grant, dean of arts and humanities. “This we hope will be a resource not only for Middletown but for all of central Connecticut.”

Wesleyan wants to renovate and expand a roughly 12,000-square-foot building on Hamlin Street just south of College Street and turn it into the Wesleyan Integrative Arts Lab. The university also proposes to do away with a deteriorating and little-used parking lot on the site, and replace it partly with new green space.

In a presentation to Middletown’s planning and zoning commission last week, the university said the work would be an aesthetic improvement. The former Mohawk Manufacturing Co. building on the site is rundown and has several broken windows, while the pavement of the parking lot is cracked and broken.

Joe Banks, Wesleyan University’s director of construction, said the university’s contractors plan to fully refurbish the roughly 12,000-square-foot building as a fine arts and performance center. They also will put on about 7,000 square feet of additional space.

The work will improve conditions for students, faculty and staff, and also benefit the community, according to Wesleyan.

“We have about 3,000 students, about a third of them in some way focus on the arts,” Grant told commissioners. “The vast majority take at least one arts course before they graduate: That’s bucking national trends. We’re really an arts-focused and creative institution.”

A new arts center would serve those students by adding classroom, performance, exhibition and office space, Wesleyan said. But maybe its biggest value would be to the approximately 100 students a year who complete a senior thesis in the arts, school officials said.

“The students need a space to get their hands dirty, to assemble their materials for rehearsals, to bring people together and try things out and experiment,” according to Grant.

Wesleyan built 11 arts buildings in 1973, but now needs more space, he said.

“That was the year that Wesleyan first admitted women, so our arts facilities were designed for a different time,” he said. “Our student population has more than doubled. We are currently over-spilling the capacity of these famous and fabulous buildings.”

Grant also noted that the 1973 buildings were individually designed to serve students in a particular arts discipline.

“We don’t have a single building that brings together the different arts forms,” Grant said. “We find students are interested in working across artistic media to create something that’s distinctively their own. That’s exactly what we have in mind for the Wesleyan Integrative Arts Lab.”

The university told town planners that it would use the space for a drawing studio, design studio, faculty offices, room for visiting guest artists, and what it called “flexible interdisciplinary space” for performances and exhibitions.

During regular days in the school year, the building would mostly host classes, Grant said. On weekends there could be occasional showings and performances, and during the winter break and summer vacation the space could be a location for guest artists.

“We’re looking at this building situated halfway between our art campus and downtown as a really distinctive opportunity to bring together the Middletown community with Wesleyan faculty, staff and students,” Grant said. “It’s in a very special location to do that.”

The commission could decide at its July 26 meeting whether to approve Wesleyan’s site plan application.