Walking the aisle of Springfield's frigid old Bing Theater is, in some respects, like visiting the set of a '70s slasher pic. Even in the daytime, it's a dark cavern. Flashlight beams slice through air heavy with vapors; glass cracks under your boots. Piles of dusty seats huddle in the corners, and overlooking it all, the old movie screen presides, a congregation of hanging tatters. If some oozing alien goon with more teeth than Julia Roberts awaits a chance at a hominid repast, this is its most likely local haunt.
Yet our tour guide, Brian Hale (pictured at left), vice president of the X Main Street Corporation, sees something else here. He is undaunted by the theater's resemblance to the sunken Titanic. His vision for the Bing—an arts center complete with galleries, classes, musical performances, theater and film—is not the product of starry-eyed hope. For one thing, the Bing is very close to opening its doors for phase one of this ambitious plan. And for another, Hale has seen to completion another unlikely outpost: Gallery 137, on Main Street in Indian Orchard.
That area may not have always been a mecca of artistic pursuits, but the nearby Indian Orchard Mills complex has seen a renaissance as home to many artist studios. Hale's sign-making business, Design WorkShop, Inc., inhabits a corner of one of the old mill buildings. The leap across the fence to Main Street was certainly one of faith—the area is a small conglomeration of timeworn shops and bars and a post office, and little else. But Hale's optimism seems to have found an audience, even here.
"The night before we opened Gallery 137, a little kid stuck his head in the door and asked if this was an art gallery," Hale says. "When we replied that it was, his face lit up with a broad smile and he exclaimed, 'Cool. I've got to go tell my friends we have an art gallery in our neighborhood!' The response has been pretty much the same over on Sumner Avenue in front of the Bing."
But last October, when Gov. Deval Patrick slashed the budget, the Bing's modest earmark amount, the $75,000 Hale says would have gotten the theater's doors open, was whittled down to just the $18,750 X Main Street Corp. had already received, stopping the project tantalizingly close to the goal.
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It's intriguing to note the list of details in the opening paragraph of Matt Viser's piece in the Boston Globe last July, headlined "Lawmakers feeding pet projects" and adorned with the subhead "Bacon comes home to every corner of the Commonwealth": "One item calls for $200,000 to be disbursed to the Boston Symphony Orchestra so the renowned group can renovate and repair Tanglewood. There is $25,000 in state taxpayer money to pay for the town of Halifax to have its 275th anniversary next July Fourth. There's enough to cover a merry-go-round in Holyoke, a ballfield in Fitchburg, and new seats at a theater in Medford."
Hard to support the funding of something a frivolous as a merry-go-round. Of course, that's not just any merry-go-round; it's one that ranks more as an attraction than a plaything. But from inside Route 128, it's hard to see all the way to Holyoke. In the same piece, Viser lists the Bing Theatre as the recipient of the same brand of earmark. Viser's subhead echoes a quote further down in the story from Rob Willington, executive director of the Massachusetts Republican Party: "This budget, which is coming three days late already, contains enough pork in it to make BLTs for the whole Commonwealth."
Amid all the yucking it up, it's easy to lose sight of the derision that often comes the way of arts-related projects, as if they are not the equals of their more purely business-minded endeavors. Add to that the fog through which many statehouse employees view the parts of Massachusetts which aren't Boston, and it's probably no wonder the Bing got short-sheeted. But Governor Patrick and his fellow budget-axers are, in their kneejerk positions, missing precisely the kind of investments that would do a great deal to increase quality of life and offer positive long-term economic impact of just the kind we need.
The New England Foundation for the Arts' Culture Count program offers a stab at estimating the impact of arts organizations on their communities, and, although Culture Count is currently limited in scope and therefore precision, it does give some notion of what the arts can do for the less-artsy economy. Take other Springfield organizations; the Springfield Community Music Center, according to Culture Count, positively affects the community's economy to the tune of around $1.9 million, and the Springfield Museums inject 28.4 million.
Sure, it's not the megabucks of a Rte. 128 biotech startup and it doesn't sport a focus-grouped name, but a project like the Bing Arts Center is, as Brian Hale says, "shovel-ready"—ready to offer something the community can be a part of creating. From Boston, cutting funds for the Bing and many other projects looks like a quick way to save a buck and not affect the most densely populated end of the state, but the reality is another matter.
The crime is multifold: the arts don't get recognized for the very real cultural and economic impact they offer, especially in a place as culturally rich as the Valley. But worse, the supporters of the Bing got the rug pulled out from under them in medias res, says Hale: "We received an initial payment of $18,750, but were then notified that our contract with the balance had been cancelled."
The list of last October's cuts (preceding another more recent round of cuts) from the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development is telling. There is not a universal pro-Boston bent to the cuts, but there are some interesting trends—the Boston-based Massachusetts Sports and Entertainment Partnership came through the October cuts with its entire $1.25 million funding, one of the largest grants, intact. Only a handful of projects maintained their full funding.
The list of cuts is massive, and many of them are complete cuts of very small projects. It would be impossible to know all of them sufficiently well to choose adequately. Still, to see an arts organization that could immediately impact the economy around the X get stymied so close to its goal is hard to take in light of some of the most massive projects remaining the same; the Bing shortfall represents a mere 4.5 percent of the Sports and Entertainment Partnership grant, and only 2.25 percent of the largest grant amount, for an Office of Travel and Tourism promotional effort "to enhance international tourism market share."
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The Bing's neighborhood, the X, is certainly a higher traffic place than Indian Orchard's Main Street, and includes all sorts of businesses. But the climate is not one of prosperous certainty. The day we visited, the nearby intersection was haunted by a busily waving man in a Statue of Liberty outfit, doing his part to send business to the nearby Liberty Tax Services. Directly across from the Bing, the Blue Moon coffee shop used to reside. Rental signs were in evidence. But maybe there is an audience for just this kind of community effort. After years of service as a large movie theater, the Bing certainly seems to conjure its share of good memories for Springfield residents.
It must be such memories that have driven the effort to restore the Bing: Hale reports that the city first took the property a decade ago for non-payment of taxes. It's only dogged persistence that has brought the old place so near to a second life. After several convolutions, Hale says, "X Main Street Corporation was named preferred developer in 2002, and began fundraising activities. In 2004, we purchased the property from the City of Springfield and began improvements, starting with a new roof on the front of the building."
The work has progressed far beyond that beginning—the old lobby is now a series of rooms for gallery space, classrooms, coffee and snack bar, and restrooms. The undertaking has a decided air of local can-do about it; the day of our visit, Sheri Green of Pioneer Valley Rebuilders led an all-female work crew, and the smell of sawdust and unrolling of measuring tapes punctuated our conversation. The coffeemakers from the Blue Moon are destined to get fired up once more when the space is done, thanks to a loan from the coffeeshop's owner, Dan Higgins.
This area is "phase one." Beyond those rooms, and currently not easily reached, is the actual old theater space. Phase one sports the scent of new sheetrock, and is so close to opening that a recent fundraiser was held there. The fundraiser itself was prompted by some helpful serendipity: Terry Stone, the construction coordinator for the Bing project, while crawling around the theater's attic, came across a treasure trove of movie posters from the Bing's heyday. For the fundraiser, the old posters went up for auction.
Though the project has seen such good fortune, the big picture is one of a persistent vision facing repeated obstacles. "We received funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through earmarks acquired by Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera and Senators Steven Buoniconti and Gale Candaras," Hale says. "If three quarters of this year's funding hadn't been cut by Governor Patrick, we would now be open."
It seems to be the eventual flowering of the arts in what look like unlikely places that drives Hale. "I've watched other communities create cultural venues, implement arts initiatives, and draw cultural consumers to them. Art and culture really can draw a community together. It strengthens the local economy, improves quality of life and builds morale.
"An urban area facing economic and quality of life challenges needs a positive focus," says Hale. "Creating community gallery/arts centers in struggling neighborhoods is a strategy worth undertaking."
And indeed, that kind of strategy has provided new draw to other Valley towns like Easthampton, where P.A.C.E. and Flywheel have undertaken arts-based additions to the local economy.
But stand in the cold cavern of the Bing, and it can be hard to keep in mind what Hale sees here, and what he seems almost certain to bring about: phase two of the Bing revival. "I envision a nice little cinema space where people can see films. Hopefully locally produced films—student, local, independent. I see a second, 500-seat concert space with excellent people playing. I see an Iron Horse that's twice as big as the Iron Horse."
"It's kind of a middle ground, a niche right between the Iron Horse and the Calvin," Hale says, referring to Northampton's biggest-name concert venues, both owned by Eric Suher's Iron Horse Entertainment Group.
It's an intriguing question: What would happen if the X held another mid-sized Valley venue?
Right now, absent more dollars, it can be hard to see more than a compelling, dusty old moviehouse. But Hale and the X Main Street Corporation are in constant pursuit of the funds that will put them over the top. This week, they submit a proposal for money from a Community Block Development Grant, and other grants are in their sights as well. The right donor could do the trick. It's a big task with a potentially big payoff.
I ask Hale if he ever gets depressed at the enormity of the project. "I wouldn't say I get depressed—I get frustrated, because I know what it could be," he says. "Think about the national stimulus. Talk about a shovel-ready project—send us a million, a million and a half, and in a year, we're stimulating the hell out of the area!"
