The leader of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts said Tuesday that the arts center’s planned move from its longtime home at 25th and Mission streets will be exorbitantly pricey, and that it is still unclear how the center will survive over the next two years, while its facility is being upgraded.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, because everything here is really expensive,” said Martina Ayala, the executive director of the center, speaking Tuesday night at a community meeting on the planned renovations. “Having to add rent to our budget now is gonna force us to cut classes, lay off teachers and cut many programs.”
Ayala said rents in the Mission range from $15,000 to $25,000 a month for spaces much smaller than their current building, and often these spaces also require additional expenses, such as structural and ADA compliance work. At the moment, she has a $490,000 relocation fund, but Ayala said it’s not enough.
She estimated the expenses over the next two years demand an annual budget of $3 million, nearly double the nonprofit’s current budget of $1.7 million. As as result, she said the 48 teachers and most of the staff may be laid off, and all 48 classes cut.
The center has occupied a city-owned building at 2868 Mission St. since its foundation in 1977, when local artists in the Mission rallied to secure a space for the representation, preservation and the celebration of Latino arts. But that building will undergo a planned $24 million renovation, long overdue, that will require the center to find new digs elsewhere in the city.
The center pays only $1 a year in rent to the city, and receives around $600,000 from the Arts Commission annually for its budget. But still, its executive director said, the center will struggle to find the hundreds of thousands of additional dollars required to pay market-rate rents elsewhere in the neighborhood..
Ayala added that the search for a new home may create a domino effect of additional spending: The Mission Cultural Center will likely be forced to take a smaller space, which will then require additional storage units — and some with temperature regulation for certain art pieces — that will add to the cost.
The 50 or so community members who attended Tuesday’s meeting said the city was not doing enough to help the center during the renovations, which include seismic upgrades and making the center ADA compliant.
District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who worked for many years in the Mission prior to attaining elected office, agreed. Melgar was critical of the city’s failure to come up with a satisfactory plan for the center while its home site is being renovated. “The way this is being presented would not be acceptable in any other community,” said Melgar.
Denise Pate, the director of community investment for the Arts Commission, said that the center does not qualify for some of the available grants because they already receive funding from the Arts Commission, both in cash and in the facilitation of the building. She said that other groups that function at the building could apply for the grants instead, and they could use those funds to support the building.
“When Martina [Ayala] tells me how many people came here, the one thing that strikes me is what happens to the community. We don’t have all the answers yet, but my job is to support the community. We are still working,” said Pate.
Gloria Esteban, a community member, said the city failed to take into account regular users of the center, like her. “You haven’t taken into account the community.” She said that community members, “as mothers, grandmothers” were “not willing” to simply accept the fact that the center must be relocated in this way. “It’s not fair that we continue to be treated this way. You have to find the economical support to support us.”
And, some of the center’s board members raised other concerns.
One, said Robert Retana, is the lack of a written commitment from the city to renew the Mission Cultural Center’s lease once it expires in 2026.
“They said that a lease would be forthcoming, and it never came,” said Retana to Lisa Zayas-Chien, the capital project manager of the Arts Commission, at Tuesday’s meeting. “This is a cultural institution, and people rely on it. It’s disrespectful to treat us that way. How can we believe what you’re saying if you’ve treated us that way?”
Zayas-Chien said that the Arts Commission is committed to renewing this contract, but that the commission would have to revise its details early next year.
Fernando Marti, a longtime Mission activist and artist at the center, said city officials should have been present at tonight’s meeting.
“I hope that next time your bosses are here to hear our concerns.” he said “They should be here.”
She’s asking for $3mil budget vs $1.7mil current. Why the +$1.3 mil? That nets over $50,000 per month over 24 months! Main difference now is that they need to pay rent. Commercial rents are in the toilet now. How big is their space now? ~5,000? They should be able to find that for under $2PSF, meaning a new rent of $10,000 max.
I dunno, I’m not sensing a real sense of efficiency on the director’s part.
The reality of the situation is not resolved with a simple back of the napkin calculation. If you are aware of reasonable compatible rental location please help MCCLA find it. Also, maybe you can help raise some of the funds too.
Support the arts! Not everything can or should be left to the ravages of the market economy.