History preservation is true a Fine Art

Sidney’s Fine Arts Center is reopening and having more renovations done, according to owner Jesse ‘Jess’ Nelson.

He said he has owned the building for about four and a half years.

Nelson said he feels that Sidney would not just benefit from an Art Center, but that “every great community needs an art center.

“Sidney is a growing community and I was surprised there wasn’t an up and running art center when I was here, people want that, people need that. I think a community that finds things to do in the field of arts, music and dance, all the fine arts, gives the community wholeness.”

Nelson said that there is a lot of culture in respect to art in Sidney already, but there was no real place for the artist of the area to consider a home base and it is this he would like to provide for artists.

He said he bought it while working on the Cabela’s home and opened the old church as a Fine Arts Center, until forced to close the doors a year and a half ago.

“I had two more big projects” - after he finished the Cabela’s project – “down in Texas, each one was about six months a piece. We didn’t have anybody to run it (Fine Arts Center) at that point. All of the key people involved in keeping it open moved away. Then we tried to sell it.”

Nelson said he didn’t want to sell to anyone who wouldn’t keep the building as an art center because he “felt that all the effort that went into this building, and it was a lot, that it just had that self-directed thing that a building has that says ‘I want to be an art center.’

“Because that is what I felt when I first walked into it. I felt like this was a perfect place for an art gallery, workshops and performances, music and itisa great place to have weddings.”

“The building kind of has a life of its own, and to turn it in to a restaurant or apartments or something other than what it needs to be,” according to him, would diminish the potential of the building.

“It was a church, and could be a church again. I think that its history, uniqueness and its value to Sidney and to Cheyenne County, it’s an historic building and it needs to have some kind of venue with it that is attached to it in a meaningful way.”

His hopes are to open the building as a tourist destination, he said because it is, “A great place for people come and see the heritage of the area. We are nicknaming the building and theaters in a historical way. The big theater is the Heritage Theater, the small theater downstairs, which could be used as a small party room or for a dinner theater, is the Little Heritage Theater.”

He said he would like to distinguish the building from other places in Sidney that display art by way of the building’s history.

“This is the last building of this type in town. When you think about it, the high school was torn down, that was a vintage building. Now what is left? You have the Elks Hall across the street as a place to hold meetings, but whatelse do you have?”

According to Nelson the building that is there was built in 1918, but the land it is on has an even longer history.

The history according to Nelson: “The very first building that was built here was owned by a single woman named Nancy Pound, and she built a dance hall. It was a dance hall until the Methodists Episcopalians arrived in town. They arrived about two years after the building was built and started holding services, in the dance hall.

“She got married,” Nelson said, “to a man named Baker and then she sold the property to the Methodist church. They held services in it for four years before they tore it down and built their own wooden church.

“That wooden church serviced them until 1918, and expanded at one time maybe at the turn of the century, that building was moved off its foundation set back,” to the side of the property, “and then this church was built. They used that building until this one was finished and tore down the wooden church, where the parking lot is.”

The building stayed a Methodist church, according to Nelson, until 1960 when the Methodists built a new church in the current location.

However, Nelson said the building was still used as a church, until he purchased the place with the intention to turn it into a fine arts center.

“I felt this was the perfect place for an art center. Sidney didn’t have anything like that at the time.”

He envisioned “a gathering place for artists and musicians” plus the challenge of restoration interested him, Nelson said.

“I like doing that (restoration), but I didn’t know quite the challenge until I got into it. But that has been fun. I was also using it to live in,” he said.

He said due to the length of time he still had left on the Cabela home he thought the building a suitable place to live and work.

Nelson said he turned two rooms in the basement into ceramic workshops which he utilized to make some of the ceramic art work for the Cabela home.

“The first thing I finished was the art gallery, because we had a lot of artist that we know, who like to show their work. So we brought in artist and were displaying in the gallery until the first time I left.”

He said he had a great deal of help with the renovations on the building when he started restoration prior to leaving Sidney.

“There are a lot of families that have put their heart and soul into this place and they want to keep it as a historic place and have it function for events and people’s personal meetings.”

A problem Nelson said he is facing with renovation of the building is installing a handicap access.

“The church wasn’t built with anything like that in mind. So we are going to work at bringing in the ADA access.”

The idea for this access is to have a lift in the back of the building that will bring people up to the main level, Nelson said, and once the lift is established the focus can then move on to making a doorway suitable for ADA access in the art gallery and main theater area.

“At some point we will get there (installing an ADA access), but it is going to take a lot of effort by a lot of people. Especially through donations, patrons, sponsors, and anything else we can find that will make this possible. Up until this point everything has been out of my pocket. My wife and I have been doing this out of our heart to make this work, but it is not a nonprofit organization.

“I can’t be a part of a nonprofit because I am a commercial artist and the IRS won’t let a commercial operation occur in ownership of a non-profit organization.”

Another challenge Nelson said he has found is high overhead making for a great balancing act to ensure the doors are financially able to stay open.

“Successful non-profits are able to go for government funding to do that,” he said regarding help in paying the overhead.

However, Nelson said a solution to that problem may be in becoming a landlord, allowing someone else to step in and run the functions of the building allowing for the Fine Arts Center to become everything he would like it to be.

“It’s just the struggle in getting it back up and running again in the aspect of finding people-” to run the center- “replacing the people that were helping before I had to shut it down the first time.

“I think there are a lot of directions this building can go in and we are trying to see what kind of response the community has and it’s been great. Everyone has been excited that we have opened up again, because they remember the kind of functions we had here.

“But you have to want, in your heart, to have it stay open. I can only support it (financially)to a point.”