The old Hunter Ford dealership on the corner of Paseo de Oñate and Hunter Street is in major disrepair. There’s water leaking from the ceiling, exposed wires strewn across the walls, and old Ford promotional posters that are frayed at the edges. The city keeps a fire truck and an Española Valley Fiesta float in the main garage.
Moving Arts Española Program Director Roger Montoya sees nothing but possibilities.
In a garage on the Hunter property that the city is letting him rent, Montoya has materials for three full dance studios, thousands of costumes and props and a smattering of various arts equipment that he plans to move into the Hunter building after the city agreed to partner with him and Moving Arts Española to renovate the structure into a multipurpose arts center.
Despite some large financial hurdles that Moving Arts Española still has to clear, Montoya’s enthusiasm has not been tempered.
As Montoya and Moving Arts School Director Salvador Ruiz recently walked through the Hunter building, Montoya already knew what was going to take the place of the rust and grime. The main garage would be cleared of the fire truck and float and in its place would be a gymnastics gymnasium with a corner for painting. Upstairs would feature multipurpose rooms for prospective students to practice ballet or take up an instrument. The cracked parking lot could become a community garden.
For all of Montoya’s ambition, the question remains how the art center is going to be funded.
Española City Council has only approved a partnership with Moving Arts Española and still hasn’t made any financial commitment to the program.
Even as Montoya was sharing his vision, he admitted that it would take a “substantial number” of dollars to renovate the Hunter building into a functional non-profit. Among the needed repairs and improvements that Montoya cited were new insulation, flooring, plumbing, windows and concrete.
Yet Montoya is convinced that the city will bear the brunt of the costs because of its desire to assist the nonprofit and increase foot traffic in the downtown area.
Asked what the city might contribute, City Manager Joe Duran said he expects the city to only pay $50,000 in remediation while Montoya and Moving Arts Española fund the rest of the construction.
Montoya said he does not believe there is any better option for the Hunter building. If any corporation had an interest in repairing the building and installing a business, it would have done so by now, he contended. And waiting for the city to move something there itself, like the library, could ensure that the Hunter building stays vacant for years to come, he said.
“If we wait for the city (to do something with the building), these kids will all be gone or dead,” Montoya said.
Moving Arts Española’s campaign to move into the Hunter building was a case of being in the right place at the right time.
In July, ownership of the gym that formerly housed the organization was transferred from the Española School District to Cariños de los Niños Charter School.
At the same time, the city’s plan to move the library to the Hunter building was stalling and now seems dead in the water after Mayor Alice Lucero announced that the library was seeking an entirely new facility.
Montoya said Moving Arts paid nothing to the District for rent, but Cariños offered his organization a rental agreement that would have cost about $34,000 a year, about a third of its annual budget.
Montoya and Ruiz have postponed their usual art classes as they try to negotiate their way into the Hunter building.
Moving Arts Española serves 200 to 300 children a year on a 30-week schedule, Montoya said. The program draws children from six counties, with 80 percent from Española, he said.
Now that Montoya has secured a partnership with the city, his next goal is to secure as long a lease for the Hunter building as possible, he said.
While he is confident that his vision will come to fruition, he acknowledges that there is a chance that the whole project will fall through, he said, just as so many other projects have fallen by the wayside since Ed Corley moved his car dealership out of the building.
Should the city not continue to back the move, he said, his fall-back plan is to try to purchase land and put the arts program there.
“I will succeed,” he said. “Part of the beauty is how.”