On Tuesday, October 17, the Stanwood – Camano Art Advocacy Commission unveiled our design plans for the new art center that is going into Stanwood and asked for feedback from the community on the exterior facade, programming and other community questions and concerns. I know that many of my friends are interested in the project of a building that I think will be the community centerpiece in Stanwood and the catalyst of west Stanwood becoming a cultural hub. I’d love your thoughts and feedback. Here’s some of the presentation that we made, including the four exteriors that we are asking for community feedback on.
The Team
Above is the SCAAC board team, staff, and architect team working on the project.
The Location
Here is the location in Stanwood for the new art center. For those who know Stanwood, you see it is the old furniture store, before that it was a hardware store. It is across from Twin City Foods.
The Current Building
Here are images of the historic, and current building that sits on the site. Originally we were hoping to restore this building. But that was impossible due to many factors that I don’t have time to go into now. But if you’d like to watch the full presentation, I’ll make sure to publish that when it comes out. However, we are doing our best to take elements of the historic and current building and incorporate them into the new art center. When I opened up the unveiling of the building design on Tuesday at the Performing Art Center, I thanked everyone who had worked hard on this project, and especially the Meyter Family Foundation whose gift of the building, two million dollars for operating expenses, and a three million dollars of seed money for the capital campaign had made such a project possible. They name of the new art center will be the Meyer Art Center celebrating that gift!
New Meyer Art Center Spaces and Programming
The new art center will have spaces that are very flexible and be able to adapt to many different uses. Here are the different uses, and concepts for those spaces.
Meyter Art Center Layout
You can see the layout of the building, the floor design, here. You can see the layout of the building, the floor design, here.
Meyer Art Center Interior
Here are some images of what the interior space will look like including main gallery, gift shop, etc. Isn’t it beautiful?
Reclaimed Materials
These are some of the reclaimed materials from the old building that we hope to use in the new art center.
Meyer Art Center Facade #1: Natural Materials, Wood
This facade uses wood to create a warm feel.
Meyer Art Center Exterior #2: Historic, Brick
The exterior uses brick to create a historic feel that fits into the surrounding buildings.
Meyter Art Center Exterior #3: Agriculture, Metal
This exterior uses metal as a not to the agricultural context and history of Stanwood.
Meter Art Center Exterior #4: Playful, Signage
This exterior uses color to create a playful, colorful building playing off the historic building’s signage on the building itself.
Landscaping and Parking
Scott Langford and Associates is working with the landscaping. They are also working on an overall landscaping plan for Stanwood that ties east and west Stanwood together.
One of the issues that we are working on is parking. As you can see, our parking is limited to a few parking spots. We are working with the City of Stanwood to use the triangle area just west of the building owned by city for parking. This will add a few spots. There is a large public parking area a few blocks from the art center that we will use for our large event parking. And of course there is street parking. It would be awesome if we could use the parking lot of the old Twin City Foods for even parking and bring people across the street safely. Also, we are looking into valet parking for big “red carpet” art openings.
Anyway, it’s very exciting. We would love your feedback on which exterior you prefer and any other questions you may have.