Emeryville Center For The Arts

BOARD of DIRECTORS

John Flores, President
John Flores has 30 years of administrative and managerial experience in municipal government. As City Manager of Emeryville for 19 years, he was instrumental in the revitalization of the city and the development of its Public Art program. He was previously with the City of Oakland for 11 years, serving in increasingly responsible administrative roles leading to the position of Deputy City Manager. Although retired, John is active on several nonprofit boards in his favorite fields of education, environment, and the arts, including the David Brower Center and the Emery Education Foundation. John has a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Golden Gate University and an undergraduate degree in Social Science from San Jose State University.

Dan Carlevaro
For 44 years, Dan Carlevaro operated the United Stamping Company in Emeryville, CA, a metal manufacturing company and the future home of the Emeryville Center for the Arts. Dan has been involved in the Emeryville community for over 20 years, as a Board member of the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce and the Emeryville Celebration of the Arts. Dan sees his involvement with the Emeryville Center for the Arts as a marriage of his professional past in Emeryville, his interest in visual arts, and his commitment to the continual evolution of the City.

Andy Getz
Andrew Getz is a building contractor, infill developer and manager of urban commercial and residential buildings. He is a General Partner at HFH Ltd., a real estate investment, development and management partnership company in Emeryville, CA, where he supervises development and construction in Southern California and the East Bay. Andy has been integral in converting Emeryville’s industrial buildings to office use and revising the City’s zoning and planning guidelines.

John Gooding
John Gooding is the owner or co-owner of several consulting and public advocacy firms including, Quadric Group, Inc., TransitCommunities, Inc., and the Milo Group of California, Inc. John is also the President of the Emery Education Foundation, Chair of OakPAC, Chair of Government Affairs for the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce, Chair of Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s One Voice, President of the Board of the Emeryville Community Action Program, a board trustee on the National Equity Project, and a board member of the Berkeley Film Foundation.

Rich Robbins
Mr. Robbins, through Wareham Development which he founded in 1977, has developed and owns a large San Francisco Bay Area portfolio of commercial, mixed use and revitalization projects. Wareham is a leading developer and owner of biotech, life sciences, pharmaceutical and laboratory research and development projects in Northern California. Mr. Robbins conceived the underlying structures that have allowed highly successful public/private partnerships primarily in the East Bay resulting in the award-winning developments of the EmeryStation campus, which include the Emeryville’s Amtrak Intermodal Transportation Center and the heralded EmeryStation East. Mr. Robbins is also a founding member of the West Berkeley and Emeryville Transit Authorities, and the Berkeley Film Foundation. Rich holds a BA degree from Bucknell University and an MBA in finance from Wharton Graduate School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sharon Wilchar
Passion for the arts and fine craft has guided much of Sharon’s career whether as an artist, an administrator or an arts advocate. As a gallery owner and textile artist in New Hope, PA, before moving to Emeryville 30 years ago, her textiles were exhibited for many years at galleries throughout the United States and at juried American Craft Council shows.

As Community Liaison for Emeryville’s non-profit 45th Street Artists’ Cooperative. The Cooperative now serves as a national model for artist-owned, affordable live-work space. Additionally for the Cooperative, she coordinates a successful artist-in-the-schools program now in its 28th year in the Emery Unified School District. Sharon has served on many city and school committees, including chairing the Emeryville Public Art Advisory Committee for almost 20 years. A founding member of the Emeryville Celebration of the Arts, she has coordinated the juried Emeryville Annual Art Exhibition for 23 of its 25 years. She has a B.S. in biology from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN.

About

Founded in 2009, the Emeryville Center for the Arts is conceived of as a gathering place for aesthetic, intellectual and educational experiences through participation in and appreciation of contemporary visual and performing arts. Soon to be housed in the former United Stamping Company building adjacent to City Hall, this 30,000 square foot warehouse is in the heart of Emeryville’s historic Park Avenue District and will include:

Galleries
250 seat theater
Café and nightspot
Unusual gifts made by regional artists store
Administrative offices

Planning for the Center has been extensive and involved a wide range of stakeholders, including City of Emeryville staff, Emeryville Redevelopment Agency members, community leaders, visual and performing artists, museum and performing arts professionals, and prospective donors. The result of these efforts is a two-year, pre-opening Strategic Plan. The ideas presented in the Strategic Plan were tested with potential Center for the Arts audiences in a series of focus groups, and with the philanthropic community as part of a Fundraising Feasibility Study.

Mission

Back in 1980’s, the City of Emeryville tipped the scales with having one of the highest percentages of artists per capita in the nation. Decades later, Emeryville continues to be recognized as a center of innovation, with a thriving community of artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders in the Bay Area. The City of Emeryville demonstrates exemplary leadership in the arts with their support of our project.

Although we are a few years away from opening the Emeryville Center for the Arts, I invite you to engage in our journey as we begin the renovation of the United Stamping Co., a 30,000 sq. ft. factory building located on the corner of Hollis St. and 40th St. next door to Emeryville City Hall.

Renovation

Jensen Architects chosen to design the new Emeryville Center for the Arts!

The Emeryville Center for the Arts will be housed in the former United Stamping Co. building in the heart of Emeryville at 4060 Hollis Street, adjacent to City Hall. Until just recently, the building was a thriving business that produced such items as accelerator pedals for military transport vehicles to brackets for medical monitoring equipment. Now, the 30,000 square foot, cavernous, brick warehouse, provides an inspiring foundation for the future contemporary art center, which will eventually serve as a focal point for the arts in Emeryville and as a regional attraction.

After building renovation, the Center will house galleries, a theater for performances and other education programs, and will include a café / nightclub, gift shop, administrative offices and separate catering workspace. The spaces within the facility will be flexible so they can be easily adapted to multiple uses. Namely, the theater might include retractable seats to allow use as a venue for anything from performances to special events to meetings.

Under the guidance and leadership of David Meckel, an experienced architect selection advisor and  arts educator, the Emeryville Center for the Arts launched its architect selection process in September 2010. The following six emerging, creative, Bay Area firms were chosen by the Center’s Board of Directors to participate in the process:

Directors Welcome

Over the past year the ECA completed a selection process for the engagement of a Bay Area architect to oversee the renovation. Design critic for the SF Chronicle, John King, states that it “may prove to be the Bay Area’s most intriguing architectural competition in memory”. The Board of Directors are in wholehearted agreement.

In addition to our renovation, we launched the Center’s inaugural programming in the spring of 2011.
A core element of our programming is hosting Artist Salons, that harkens back to the days of Gertrude Stein’s 27 Rue de Fleuris in Paris, where Picasso, Matisse and other creative people would meet to discuss art, literature, and politics. Invitations to these events will be posted on the website and sent to our list of friends via email. Please take a moment and provide us with your contact information so we can include you in our invitation list.

As we develop the Center’s online presence, we would like to hear your voice through participation in our E’Ville Arts Blog located on the home page. We want you to think out loud and share your Bay Area arts and Emeryville experiences with our readers. Help us to become a destination for people who are passionate about innovative contemporary work and the creative process behind it.

Funding

The Emeryville Center for the Arts would like to thank our sponsors for their generous contributions. The Emeryville Redevelopment Agency is providing $3.5 million towards the development costs of the new arts center. In addition Emeryville-based Pixar Animation Studios has generously provided a $2 million dollar grant to the new arts center and PG&E has provided a $25,000 capital grant. With this initial funding, the Emeryville Center for the Arts will engage an architect, and develop the programming and systems needed to renovate the building located at 4060 Hollis Street in Emeryville. A comprehensive campaign will soon be launched to complete the funding for this $15.3 million project.

Inaugural 2011

The Emeryville Center for the Arts is scheduled to begin programming in the summer of 2011.

However, there is one problem — No Galleries, No Theater, No Building!

The Solution:
Emeryville is a City of undiscovered spaces. Tucked away behind, within and adjacent to some of the most interesting architecture in the Bay Area, Eville Arts will be launched as a sort of a ‘come what, come may’ visual and performing arts program where you’ll discover the artistic works of both emerging and virtuoso visual and performing artists, from the Bay Area and beyond. We will guide you to these spaces through our blog posts, tweets, and other fun and accessible means. What you do afterwards is up to you.

Our program team is hard at work developing exciting programming for the summer of 2011 and possibly as early as spring. If you have a passion for contemporary arts and want to be one of our first audience members, please add your contact information through the link to the right. You can also follow us on our blog.

Emeryville Center For The Arts | 5752 Hollis Street Emeryville, CA 94608 | (510) 601-0520 | Fax: (510) 601-0590