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Do Pittsburgh’s eastern neighborhoods have a big unmet need for meeting spaces for arts groups and other organizations?
An established arts nonprofit and one of Pittsburgh’s oldest community-development organizations are betting they do.
This Thu., May 15, marks the public kick-off of the Rotunda Collaborative, a new space housed in an old synagogue on North Negley Avenue, in Garfield. The building’s owner is the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., and the key tenant for the new arts-education and community events center is BOOM Concepts.
The BGC, which has been working on the project for two years, closed a $598,000 deal for the property late last year with former owner Beacon Communities. Executive director Rick Swartz said the Rotunda Collaborative expands, in part, on the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, the 1990s project that brought galleries and more to Penn and gave birth to the still-ongoing first-Fridays art crawl Unblurred.
“It became clear to us that not only is the arts an important bridge-builder here in the city, but we also need places where average people can congregate, celebrate the milestones that occur in their lives,” Swartz said. “Between the arts and the diminishing number of public gathering spaces in the East End today, we felt kind of compelled to really pursue this project seriously.”
The 102-year-old rotunda, designed by famed architect Henry Hornbostel, housed B’nai Israel’s services for 70 years. It boasts 11,000 square feet of space, 35-foot ceilings and a mezzanine for offices and meeting spaces.
“This space is going to be absolutely beautiful,” said artist and BOOM co-founder DS Kinsel. Not only is it considerably grander than the modest Penn Avenue storefront that’s been BOOM’s home for all of its 11 years, but the Rotunda will also allow the group to expand its program of exhibitions, artist residencies and more, most of which are now housed in partner venues around the city.
BOOM has two full-time employees — Kinsel and fellow co-founder Thomas Agnew — and two part-timers. Each year it contracts up to 100 artists for teaching, outreach and exhibitions at venues from the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Frick Environmental Center to Downtown’s Emerald City.
The Rotunda “feels like the natural evolution of our existence in the neighborhood,” Kinsel said.
B’nai Israel closed in 1995 and was once home to the Urban League of Pittsburgh Charter School. The rotunda — the sanctuary where services had once taken place — remained vacant, as it did after developer Beacon Communities converted the adjoining school into apartments (and added another apartment structure behind it).
So the rotunda has been unused for three decades. Swartz calls Thursday’s event, titled Raising the Roof on the Rotunda, a “barn-raising.”
“You’ll have the chance to see the grand sweep of the space,” he said. The fundraiser will feature food, drinks, art, music and performances.
But Raising the Roof will be the last public event there for a while. The building needs a lot of work including, for starters, new electrical, plumbing and HVAC. While the building is zoned commercial, Swartz says the Rotunda will require new city occupancy permits. And with no parking on site, and street parking limited, Rotunda is seeking a nearby location that would hold three dozen or more cars for evening events.
In all, Swartz said, it will take two years to ready the building for occupancy, and four to complete the project.
The Rotunda will serve seven neighborhoods, including Garfield, East Liberty, Highland Park, Friendship, Bloomfield, Morningside and Stanton Heights. The plan is to find eight or nine groups to join BOOM in the collaborative.
Member groups would pay a monthly fee, Swartz said, but the building would also host outside events — everything from youth sports banquets and graduations to weddings, performances, educational forums and more. The building should be able to accommodate 300 or more guests, he said.
Most importantly, Swartz said, access would be affordable, at a time when the closure or demolition of churches (like Bloomfield’s recently leveled Immaculate Conception) and Moose Lodges has left that swath of town with an array of venues too small, too expensive or otherwise unsuitable for many such gatherings.
At Rotunda, BOOM will be the constant. Kinsel says he and fellow co-founder Thomas Agnew view the facility as the group’s “forever home.”
The key to success will be demand.
Swartz said the BGC’s current activity center, in a former church on North Pacific Avenue, is inundated with requests, whether from a children’s ballet school, an improv-comedy troupe or groups seeking to hold health-education events.
“We are turning people away all the time who want to have events at our building,” he said.
Kinsel said that since the press release announcing the Rotunda went out, in late April, six “established” organizations have reached out to him about having events there.
“Thank you for the excitement,” he replied. “We’re two years out! Let’s figure out something for 2027!”
Ticket information for Raising the Roof on the Rotunda is here.
