Is the GoggleWorks' momentum running out?

By Steve Reinbrecht

The GoggleWorks Center for the Arts is supposed to have a big role in brightening Reading’s future.

“By all counts, Reading is well on its way to an historic period of revitalization and prosperity,” says the state’s KeystoneEdge webpage about the city. “It might have begun with The GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, a community art and cultural resource center founded in 2003 in a former safety goggles factory.”

“The GoggleWorks, the biggest arts center of its kind in the nation, calls Reading home. As a renovated factory building set in the heart of Reading, it sparks hope that the arts can jolt life into the city,” according to an article in January2013 in Curator, an online arts magazine.

“Art is one of the best ways to redevelop the city,” retail magnate Al Boscov, who was instrumental in creating the GoggleWorks, told Berks County Living magazine in October 2013. “Art is fueling the rebirth of the city of Reading.”

“Can the arts revive Reading?” asks a Reading Eagle story about the arts center this week.

But is the GoggleWorks, which opened in September 2005 at the cost of $13.5 million, succeeding?

It never has been able to cover its expenses without rich people and philanthropies donating a huge chunk of its roughly $1.7 million annual budget, including more than $1 million in 2012 and 2013. For example, Boscov donated $570,000 in 2012 and $300,000 in 2013. Marlin Miller, another founder, donated $550,000 in 2012 and $300,000 in 2013.

Some artists who have had studios in the GoggleWorks since it opened are leaving. Too few people visit their studios, some say. One says the GoggleWorks is failing its mission to engage the neighbors: “To nurture the arts, foster creativity, promote education and enrich the community.”

Many city residents don’t visit or know much about the place.

The Berks tourist-bureau website virtually ignores the GoggleWorks.

A row of never-leased retail space right across the street is starting to look trashy.

But the GoggleWorks’s leader, who started in July 2012, says he has the answer to get more money to sustain the arts center and attract young artists to live and work here.

Art has ignited positive change in city neighborhoods across the world. Susan Golembiski, a fashion designer who left the GoggleWorks after buying Jan Rae, a business in West Reading, easily reeled off a list of communities, some urban, that have transformed themselves by embracing art: Lambertville, New Hope, Fishtown, Manayunk, South Street, Red Bank.

Local artists and entrepreneurs made them fun places, she said, and people began to visit from farther away.

To spur revitalization in Reading, city leaders decided to create an arts district centered on the GoggleWorks. In 2012, local architect Lee Olsen was paid $75,000 to create a plan for the Ricktown arts district among the blocks of mostly poor, Spanish-speaking people.

But Ricktown has gone nowhere.

“Although there was a lot of discussion, nothing proceeded,” GoggleWorks spokeswoman Lauren McNitt said.

In March, Boscov asked for about $2.25 million in federal money that had been earmarked for Ricktown to instead develop buildings on Penn Street.

"There's nothing we can do in Ricktown strong enough to make any impact," Boscov said. "But this (Penn Square project) could work." he said in March.

Some GoggleWorks artists say the number of visitors has declined and that GoggleWorks has to do better marketing. McNitt has heard artists are disappointed that more art is not being purchased.

Artist Alan Cernak has had a studio in the GoggleWorks since it opened but has decided to leave. He said the project started out wonderfully but that foot traffic has declined.

“Now it’s down to zero.”

Not quite – the GoggleWorks’s electric eye counted a monthly average of 19,820 visits over the past eight months, with the highest in May -- 25,802. Before the GoggleWorks installed counters in early October 2013, it didn’t tally visitors, McNitt said.

Golembiski said the number of visitors was good at first, especially during Second Sunday events, but has dropped recently.

“People don’t want to go into Reading,” she said. “People are afraid of Reading. I don’t understand it. I’m not. … I feel kind of guilty leaving it.”

Cernak, whose Japanese-style art attracts many young people, agreed that fear of crime is a barrier.

“They hear we’re going to move to West Reading, and everybody’s mother goes, “Oh good.’ “

Artist Suzanne Fellows, also a board member, said it’s unlikely the center will see again the crowds it attracted in its first years.

Many people like to disparage GoggleWorks, she said, but things are going well. “Things aren’t in the ditch.”

At times, the GoggleWorks café has closed for lack of business, though now it is run by Reading’s Mi Casa Su Casa restaurant.

The GoggleWorks has a high turnover of artists, said artist Ed Terrell, who ran the African Coalition of Reading gallery in the GoggleWorks from its opening in 2005 until he left in March.

Studio space is in demand because many artists are lured by the prestige and promise of being part of an arts organization, Terrell said.

“After some months, they’re sitting in their studios, realizing no one’s coming by,” Terrell said. “So many amazing artists who came there to do stuff leave.”

Every spring for years, Terrell has held an art show and contest in the GoggleWorks for Reading School District students, giving awards and displaying art work from every grade and every school. His award ceremonies packed the floor with adults and children from the city.

He says the center is not following its mission because it does not reach out to the local community

“It’s a very quiet place,” he said. “A lot more could be going on there to represent the community. … They don’t target the surrounding community.”

The last outdoor community event was in the summer of 2011 in the parking lot, McNitt said. But she said holding a farmer’s market inside the GoggleWorks’s cafeteria every Friday is a great way to attract new visitors from the neighborhood and nearby high rises, filled mostly with old people. She distributed 400 bilingual fliers about the market to residents and students in nearby Lauer’s Park Elementary School.

After finding a flier in her child’s school bag and seeing sidewalk signs, Mariel Tineo visited the GoggleWorks for the first time June 13 with her young children to see the farmer’s market, which debuted that day. She said her children enjoyed the market, and she bought honey and bread.

To other residents, the GoggleWorks remains a mystery. Pablo Reyes-Polanco had noticed the colored flashing lights on the exterior. “I never knew that was the GoggleWorks, and I’ve been here for five years.” He was surprised to hear what it was. “I like art.”

Residents Yesenia Montanez and Heisy Berroa Nuñez also had noticed the lights but didn’t know it was the GoggleWorks or an arts center.

Friends Marcell and Miguel like to hang out in the cool, comfortable third-floor lounge after discovering the GoggleWorks during a Reading High School field trip. They also like looking at the art.

“Many people don’t know about this place,” Miguel said.

Beside the new market, the GoggleWorks serves the community with free after-school art classes, McNitt said. In 2013, the GoggleWorks served almost 1,100 students with 197 arts classes, including 518 children in 60 free after-school classes.

“I’d like to know how to reach more people in the community,” she said.

The Reading Eagle, Albright College radio WXAC and Berks Community Television (BCTV) have helped spread the word about the GoggleWorks and its events, McNitt said.

But the Greater Reading Convention and Visitors Bureau website is not much help. The top of its “arts and culture” page in its “What to do section” mentions the Amish, but not the GoggleWorks.

The top of the “attractions” section mentions the Pagoda, but not the GoggleWorks. The website lists dozens of attractions alphabetically, so you see the Biedler House and Cornwall Iron Furnace, remarkable as those sites might be, long before you get a clue, while you’re planning a trip to Reading, that there’s a place called the GoggleWorks.

The GoggleWorks, spreading out over 145,000 square feet in a five-story former factory, is full of galleries, artist studios, beauty and whimsy. It is free to enter, and you may wander on three floors where much beautiful, intriguing and provocative art, by local and visiting artists, is always on display.

It has a wondrous wood shop and a cozy movie theater. Though now operating at full blast, the center has had to close it exceptional glassmaking studio, with its giant furnaces, because of the high energy costs. Winter heating costs in the old building are killer.

GoggleWorks’s executive director, Phil Walz, who started in October 2012, said he has a plan to find the revenue to allow the arts center pay its own way – and it involves attracting people from around the world, not just the neighborhoods.

In May, glass artists from across America came to Reading for an intensive two-week class. More art students will come to learn how to form glass in kilns, jewelry and metalsmithing, ceramics and fine woodworking. The two-week workshops range from $475-$660. The classes feature renowned regional and national faculty and target emerging and professional artists.

The revenue stream will “absolutely” plug the GoggleWorks’ budget gap, Walz said. But the math is daunting – to raise $1 million, the center would have to collect $660 from more than 1,500 art students.

The plan uses the center’s advantages – its physical capacity, year-round operation, location, low-cost public transit, low cost of living and competitive course prices, Walz wrote.

It will also help develop the city, Walz said. It could help create a place where young artists could rent cheap space, use equipment they could never afford on their own, find cheap housing and walk to work. Similar elite arts centers are generally in remote spots and operate only 2-3 months a year.

“We believe that our comparatively low cost of living, ease of access to major metropolitan East Coast centers, the cost, availability, and high quality rental studios available, and the availability of large teaching studios for rent, combined with a vital creative community, will make Reading a destination for serious artists wanting to begin a career.”

Artists also complained GoggleWorks administrators were closed to their ideas.

Cernak had pushed the idea of a convention for lovers of anime – a Japanese art style – that would have included visits to the Pagoda, but said it didn’t get anywhere.

Golembiski wanted to teach fashion and design classes to young people so they could learn her vanishing trade.

“They just couldn’t make it happen.”

Terrell and others made a plan called GoggleScapes with awnings, benches, lights, planters, sculptures and a banner across the street to make the center look more exciting.

“This was all shut down.”

Administrators also shot down the idea for a mural at the entrance, Terrell said.

McNitt said the GoggleWorks suffers from a lack of resources, not good ideas. Walz gets such suggestions every day, McNitt said.

Referring to GoggleScapes, she said: “Where is the money going to come from for something like that? GoggleWorks is being asked to be self-sufficient. What are we going to cut?”

Similar sites do not have much exterior art, and once installed it’s hard to have removed, McNitt wrote.

“Permanent art such as what Mr. Terrell was proposing would also be a reflection of the organization's aesthetic, cultural and institutional values. Walz believes that anyone should be able to come here and develop their own.”

Is the arts center a symbol of the disconnection between the people who plan what to build and promote to improve the city – and the people who live there? Do development plans depend too much on attracting outside people to bring their money into Reading instead of organically improving the city from the inside out?

On cold days last winter, apparently homeless people gathered in a seating area in the arts center, Golembiski said.

“It put people off.”

Terrell wants to focus on the neighborhood, no matter how scruffy it is.

“It has to be a living, breathing place,” Terrell said of the arts center.

Decisions now are based on paranoia, he said.

“With art, you can’t have paranoia,” he said.