PHOTO VIA BLUE BAMBOO CENTER FOR THE ARTS FACEBOOK PAGE
Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts (Instagram | Website) in Winter Park is planning to lease out its second floor to visual artists as the venue works through rising rent, construction delays and the loss of city funding.
Winter Park city commissioners indicated agreement at a budget work session last week to end the city’s annual $12,900 contribution to Blue Bamboo, one of several local nonprofits that receive city dollars (including Mead Botanical Garden, Winter Park Historical Association, Polasek Museum, Winter Park Playhouse, Enzian Theater, and Crealde School of Art). Mayor Sheila DeCiccio questioned the arrangement at the meeting, asking why the city should fund an organization that already pays it rent. Commissioners are set to take their first budget vote next week.
The day before that meeting, Todd Weaver, a former city commissioner who now serves as vice chairman of Blue Bamboo’s board, asked commissioners for a month-long extension to secure a certificate of occupancy for the building’s second floor, which the nonprofit leases from the city inside the old library building. Commissioners granted the extension so the space can be brought into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and other city codes.
Weaver told the Winter Park Voice that construction on the second floor is nearly complete and that the group will begin paying its new, higher rent this month. He said the space will be divided into 21 studios for visual artists to rent, though he could not say when those spaces will open.
The plan comes about three months after a tense meeting between Blue Bamboo chairman Jeff Flowers and the city commission, in which Flowers sought lease changes after the venue’s original second-floor tenant walked away. Flowers cited construction delays and the death last year of the organization’s founder, Chris Cortez, as additional setbacks. Commissioners did not agree at that meeting to reduce the group’s rent or to allow the building to be used for anything other than the arts.
Blue Bamboo says it has invested about $1.5 million into the building so far, including more than $900,000 in grants from Orange County’s tourism development tax revenue. The organization’s first-floor music venue opened more than a year ago and regularly hosts events from Thursday through Sunday. Check out their September lineup below.
