Armory Master Plan

March 23, 2026

Dear Friends of Arts at the Armory,

We want to share an important update with our community.

After nearly five years of waiting, Arts at the Armory officially submitted our proposal last week in response to the City of Somerville’s Armory RFP process to continue operating in our home.

We put forward a strong, thoughtful, and comprehensive application—one that reflects both the depth of our work and our vision for the future. We are proud of what we submitted, and deeply grateful to the artists, community members, partners, and supporters who make Arts at the Armory what it is. We’ve published some of the narrative highlights of our proposal here.

The City published the bids that were received in response to the Armory RFP here. We were the only bidder for the Performance Hall.

The City is expected to announce awards on July 13, 2026; we look forward to sharing more thoughts and reflections on this process once the announcement is made.

In the meantime, our focus remains exactly where it belongs: bringing you the vibrant, meaningful, and inspiring programming that defines Arts at the Armory. We look forward to seeing you at upcoming events and continuing to build this community together.

Thank you, as always, for your ongoing support. We are grateful for community members in Somerville and beyond for your advocacy and engagement with us. If you’d like to be part of what comes next, please consider making a donation or joining us at our annual fundraiser GLOWBALL on April 10th as we celebrate the completion of this major milestone.

With gratitude,

Stephanie & Jess
Co-Directors

—

June 3, 2025

If you haven’t already read the City of Somerville’s announcement of their release of the final Armory Master Plan, you can do so here. Although we hold concerns about the Plan’s ambiguous language, Arts at the Armory is looking forward to finally to moving to the RFP process after four long years. We hope we are successful in getting long term stability for our organization in our home building.

As part of the Armory Master Plan, the City has released a call for applicants for a 5-person Armory Advisory Board with a deadline of July 14th. This is the route the City has chosen, and we see opportunities for leadership and playing a significant role in shaping the Armory building over the next three years. If this is something you would be interested in, please read here for more info, or consider sharing it with someone you think might be a fit.

January 30, 2025

Those closest to the Armory Master Plan have remarked that there has been a marked shift in tone, for the better, since the Dec. 10th Public Hearing on the Plan. We credit this in large part to the efforts that Ward 5 City Councilor Naima Sait made to get us into dialogue with City administration, and we are also grateful for the authentic listening and responsiveness of Rachel Nadkarni, the City’s Director of Economic Development. A revised Armory Master Plan was shared on January 17th, discussed by the Finance Committee on January 21st and presented to the City Council at the January 23rd meeting. We are awaiting a finalized Armory Master Plan to be presented at an upcoming City Council meeting (date TBD), and then we hope to move quickly to the RFP process.

January 21, 2025

A revised Master Plan was released on January 16th. While there are many things that the Armory Master Plan could have been, the current Plan more or less maintains the status quo, following the often heard advice, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That said, the City’s Plan continues to grapple with what the City’s role in the building is, and a lot of questions have been left open-ended and to be figured out as things evolve. On one side that is reassuring to us, as there is the theoretical possibility for eventual tenant governance. On the other side, it creates uncertainty and doubt because, for example, the City’s ability to commandeer space in the building has been written into the newly added Bylaws on pps. 57-58. In our conversation with Rachel Nadkarni this afternoon, we identified various scenarios in which the RFP and Advisory Board could face hurdles and asked Director Nadkarni to address them. She said she would include some additional provisions addressing how this aspect can be dealt with from the tenant and community position.

While we are still concerned that all of the extra layers of bureaucracy could lead to stagnation, inefficiency, tenant turnover and wasted resources, we understand why the City believes the Armory Advisory Board is needed to get the building tenanted, and we appreciate the revision’s scaled back plan for the Armory Advisory Board. We also appreciated the new section on current tenants, and more information on the history of arts tenants in the building. That said, we think it’s important that the Plan is also transparent about the ways in which the City, and specifically Somerville Arts Council, has used the building over the past three years. Some data and transparency on this usage, including any financial data, would be helpful to complement the robust data that is available from the other tenants. If the Somerville Arts Council (SAC), or any City department, has plans to use the building it would be better to just come out and state it, as opposed to backdoor conversations that might come to light down the road.

We also asked Dr. Nadkarni to beef up the timeline section in the Plan and provide more time-bound structure and detail. Let’s remember that one of the key points at the Public Hearing was that the community wants tenants to get leases asap. That prioritization, and how we get there quickly, should be seen more clearly via the timeline in the Armory Master Plan.

We have appreciated the opportunity to have a voice in the process, and we are grateful for the support of City Council, and especially Council Sait, in that. We will need to see the final version of the Plan to know whether we can offer our support but we are currently feeling optimistic.

December 19, 2024

There was a Public Hearing related to the City’s Armory Master Plan Draft on December 10, 2024. For those that weren’t able to attend, you can watch the recording here. We were humbled by the support expressed for Arts at the Armory during hearing, and are very grateful to all who participated.

There is still time to submit feedback on the Armory Master Plan via this portal but we would recommend doing that as soon as possible. The two City departments working on the plan, OSPCD and the Somerville Arts Council, are supposed to get a final draft of the Armory Master Plan to City Council by the end of December.

Many people have contacted us asking how they can best advocate for us. If you haven’t done so already, review the Armory Master Plan Draft, and see what you think. We’ve copied/pasted what we believe to be the most important parts of the Draft here.

We are advocating that the City administrators revise the Armory Master Plan Draft so that 1) the Plan can ideally be approved by City Council at a TBD January meeting 2) the approval of the Plan will lead to the start of the RFP Process asap and 3) Arts at the Armory can respond to the RFP and secure a long-term lease on the Performance Hall, the Café, B5, and any other spaces in the Armory building that we wish to bid on.

We are advocating that the City making the following revisions to the Draft:

-Include a section in the plan that acknowledges the current tenants in the Somerville Armory, and their work. This section should also set forth a short term plan and timeline for the current tenants (the next 6-12 months) that affirms the following: the RFP process will begin before June 30, 2025; leases will be issued before the end of 2025; the City will redouble efforts in the day-to-day management and upkeep of the building and grounds.

-Stipulate that the Five Person Advisory Board will only be involved in advising City administration in the RFP process to dispose of Armory properties, and will not be involved in future Armory governance.

-Stipulate that an existing non-profit organization could perform future Armory governance.

-Provide more practical information about the quasi-municipal trust option performing future Armory governance. What is a projected pathway and timeline for this? How is it similar to how the Somerville Media Center functioned?

November 30, 2024

After being without a lease for 1.5 years, we received an executed 30 day license agreement and a support letter from the Mayor on November 14th. While the license agreement and letter are better than nothing, we have explained to the City that a 30 day license agreement does not fulfill the needs of our business model, which relies on our ability to execute event contracts up to two years in advance, seek fundraising, and retain staff.

After 3.5 years of City ownership, we thanked the City administration for delivering their Armory Master Plan Draft on November 25th. We responded to the Draft Plan here, we copied and pasted some key passages from the 49 page Draft Plan here, and we asked some questions of the Plan here. The community has been invited to provide feedback to the Draft Plan in a Finance Committee meeting on December 10th at 6pm via Zoom. Instructions to participate appear here. The community is also invited to response to the Plan via SomerVoice here.

November 13, 2024

After being without a current lease document for 1.5 years, on November 6, 2024, Arts at the Armory received license agreements for the three spaces we operate in the Armory building (the Performance Hall, the Cafe and B5) from our landlord, the City of Somerville. The requested monthly rent amount for the three spaces is $7,582. The license agreement allows the property owner to ask the licensee to leave within 30 days. We signed the license agreements on November 8th and we are awaiting the countersigned copies. We also received a draft of a “Comfort Letter” from the Mayor that has yet to be signed.

An Op-Ed written by Joe Lynch was published in The Somerville Times and the Cambridge Day on November 13, 2024.

October 28, 2024

Related to our ongoing challenges with our landlord, the City of Somerville, we wish we had better news to report. Despite many rounds of back and forth with the City’s Legal Department, we still do not have a License Agreement, and we have been without any type of lease agreement for over 1.5 years. Building management continues to be an issue, and we were recently informed that City administrators are hoping to release the Armory Master Plan for internal review in November. The City has not met their own deadline of October 2024 to circulate the Armory Master Plan for public comment. We are holding the City to their own repeatedly extended deadline to have the Armory Master Plan finished and approved by City Council by December 31, 2024. If this does not happen, we will continue our plan to move our entire operation, and everything inside of it, to another space.

We believe that we have gone above and beyond in terms of advocating for the community’s continued access to all that Arts at the Armory offers you. We have been tireless in our efforts related to communicating and meeting with City officials, City Council, and the community at large. We have delivered petitions signed by thousands of people and delivered copious amounts of data to the City. At this point there is little more to be done except to continue to talk to the press to see if that prompts the administration to take action.

We need our community’s support now more than ever. If you feel moved to talk or write to your City Councilor(s) or members of the administration, please do so. Although we might not show it, the City’s negligence and mismanagement has had a profoundly negative impact on our organization. The instability created by the City has impacted our ability to book events and earn revenue, our fundraising, and our staff retention. We will be making a strong pitch for end of year giving to Arts at the Armory; thank you in advance for your support.

September 4, 2024

Related to how things are going with our landlord, the City of Somerville, the Legal department is putting its final touches on our License Agreement, and we continue to meet monthly with staff from Somerville Arts Council and the City’s OSCPD department. We have communicated to City administrators that we are expecting them to meet their own deadline to have the Armory Master Plan finalized and approved by City Council no later than December 31, 2024. And we are expecting the RFP process to be well underway by the end of our fiscal year on June 30, 2025. We continue to explore contingency plans in case the City does not deliver.

July 26, 2024

As you know, Jess and Stephanie met with Mayor Ballantyne and OSPCD Director Tom Galligani on July 18th. Both the Mayor and Director Galligani were very generous with their time, we got through our full agenda, and delivered materials including our recent survey results as well as the Letter to the Mayor signed by over 200 people.

Despite our requests to find a solution relative to our lease, we were told that the City cannot give us anything more than a License Agreement (which allows the City to give us 30 days notice to leave). The Mayor offered to investigate whether or not her administration could issue some type of support letter that we could use with stakeholders. We are presently waiting for a revised License Agreement and a possible support letter.

Related to our concerns about the Armory Master Plan process and the lack of management and governance in the building, the Mayor told us that she doesn’t want to see us go but we need to continue to wait out the process. We’ve been told by the administration that an Armory Master Plan draft will be ready to go to City Council for a vote this fall, and then the City will “move quickly to implementation.” We’ve been informed that the Armory Master Plan is being written by Ted Fields, Senior Planner, and Michael Rosenberg, Arts Development Manager, and they are still taking input on the plan. Click here for how to reach them.

July 1, 2024

The results from the survey completed by over 200 people that we, Arts at the Armory, circulated in June 2024 related to the Armory Master Plan are available here.

Today an article entitled “Goal at Armory is not ‘to kick anyone out,’ though exasperated tenants ponder exits” by Claire Ogden was published by Cambridge Day.

In addition, we are currently collecting signatures on a Letter to the Mayor in advance of our July 18, 2024 meeting with Mayor Ballantyne. Click here if you would like to review and consider signing the letter. Thank you for your support.

If you would like to write your own letter about the situation to the Mayor, City Councilors, or other City staff, please do so. We’d love to receive a copy of your letter!

May 18, 2024

Earlier this week, Arts at the Armory sent out communication encouraging our community to attend the last of the four hybrid City-led Armory Master Plan Community Meetings, which was held on Wednesday, May 15th. We also asked people to participate in a survey that we hope will enable all of us to have a clearer understanding of what the community would like to see as it relates to the “governance” of the Armory building. For those of you who attended the meeting either in person or online, and to those of you who have participated in this survey, we thank you!

For those of you who were not able to attend this community meeting, you can view the recording of the two hour meeting here. Thank you to City of Somerville staff for making it available online so quickly. You are able to download the materials presented at the meeting here. Feedback was requested on the material presented at the meeting. By going to the City’s Armory Master Plan webpage you can find out how to channel that feedback. Click here for feedback submitted by our Co-Director / CEO Stephanie Scherpf.

We, along with most in attendance, were under the impression that this was to be a meeting for the City to listen to the community and collect feedback on ideas. Instead, in a kind of deja vu harkening back to the City-led community meetings in July/August 2023, City staff presented three City-created options for “a pathway to governance.” All three options were created by the City to keep the City in charge of ownership, management and operations of the Armory building. One option presented, the “Quasi-Municipal Trust” does not even exist. A second option was that a City Department would control the Armory. The third option was that the City “would create a new non-profit organization” to govern the Armory. Details were light on every aspect of the proposed non-profit organization–would it replace Arts at the Armory? What would its financial and operational model be? Who would “pay for it”? How long would it take to set up?

When those who participated tried to ask questions or clarify what was being said throughout the meeting, the questions were dismissed or went unanswered by the City officials leading the meeting. The City staff were completely focused on what the Armory might be in 50 years and would not entertain questions about what the Armory needs now. Furthermore, it became clear that Arts at the Armory was under attack by the City of Somerville and the Somerville Arts Council, and accusations were being made that had no merit or basis in truth. These criticisms came primarily from a few Somerville Arts Council Board Members advocating for SAC’s SomArts spaces, and we would like to address those concerns here.

Nothing about the Armory Master Plan process has been about what “the community” wants. It has been about what a few people within the Somerville Arts Council (SAC) and OSPCD are devising. These past four City-led Armory Master Plan “community meetings” have been a charade for the City to steamroll their own agenda to attempt to control the Armory. If the Mayor follows the plan that comes out of this process she will be ill-advised and going against what 95% of the broader community wants. We have the data to back up our statements, and the City has not provided any data to support their claims or conclusions. Had the City, SAC and OSPCD instead approached this process by looking to cultivate, support and amplify the success of what has existed at the Armory for almost two decades, and what the community already loves and values about the current tenants, this could have been a highly collaborative process that would have resulted in finding a place for everyone seeking arts use space at the Armory. This opportunity still exists if the property owner wants to finally engage in it.

Our current survey closes on June 7th and we will gladly make the data (minus email addresses) available to the public as we promised that we would and as we did with the results of our petition that circulated last August of 2023 which was signed by 1,175 members of the community.

So what is it that we want?We, at Arts at the Armory, feel and hold a collective responsibility to convey and represent to the City of Somerville what you, our community, have told us that you want, in many different ways. We want the decision-makers within City government to listen to you and to us. We want a fair and transparent process, and an expedient, feasible and pragmatic solution to what has been a very convoluted, difficult and long process over the past 3 years. That near-term solution does not have to prevent us from dreaming about the future. We want a tenant-led governance model that is not controlled by the City of Somerville. We want to collaborate with the City of Somerville and all stakeholders to make sure that the needs of artists and the community at large are met to the greatest extent possible given what the Armory building can and cannot do and be. We want an RFP process so that Armory tenants can have long-term leases, new arts-use tenants can put to use all of the space sitting empty in the Armory, and new short-term/hourly uses can be imagined and put into place.

Wednesday’s meeting ended with “next steps” as put forth by the City. These next steps include the City using their own narrative to write its own “Armory Master Plan” and then bringing that plan to the City Council for vote. Their unsubstantiated claim that this plan is what the community has decided is simply disturbing. Our next steps will include speaking with the press and writing a letter to the Mayor to be signed by Somerville and Greater Boston arts leaders, artists, business owners, small business owners, Somerville residents, donors, and the wider community. We will be reaching out again with further information and calls to action. We want to once again thank you all for your outreach, support and participation in this process and for completing our survey by June 7, 2024.

We have spent an inordinate amount of time on the Armory Master Plan process, time that should have been spent operating and fundraising for our organization. That said, we welcome you to reach out to us if you have questions or if you would like to dialogue.

Arts at the Armory Co-Directors Stephanie Scherpf and Jess White

Complete Survey

May 13, 2024

We’re writing today with an update on the Armory Master Plan process and two important requests. The final Armory Master Plan meeting will focus on “Building Governance” and is scheduled for Wednesday, May 15^th at 6pm at the Community Baptist Church on College Avenue. To prepare, we ask that our community engage by: 1) completing this survey, and 2) attending this important meeting with survey responses in mind.

Approximately one year ago, the City held three Armory Master Plan Community meetings at which the community irrefutably rejected the idea of the City operating and programming the Armory building. (Click here for City-created presentation that acknowledges this.) We held our own Community Meeting in August 2023, followed by a petition that was signed by over 1,100 people who also wrote in with extensive comments. Instead of digesting and using the information from these meetings, the City responded by initiating four additional Armory Master Plan Community Meetings that will finally conclude this week. The community and current tenants are tired of endless meetings that go nowhere. Meeting fatigue has resulted in a lack of attendance and further community input, which could potentially turn the narrative against what was originally voiced to the City.

This community hoped that the City would “do no harm” and offer support to the arts tenants after taking ownership of the Armory in May 2021, but that has not been the case. Clearly, the City of Somerville is not the right entity to manage or govern the Armory building:

Arts at the Armory has operated without a lease since July 1, 2023. We were also without a lease from July 1, 2022 – February 1, 2023, and were forced to sign a lease that doubled our rent so that we could produce a lease document for an important grant deadline.

We have offered the City of Somerville feedback, information and advice at every turn. We have collaborated and hosted many City events over the past three years. We started monthly meetings with members of OSPCD and SAC, often attended by Ward 5 City Councilor Naima Sait. We bring agenda items and questions, but we don’t receive answers or follow up to our questions. Our ideas, proposals, and offers to help are dismissed.

The Center for Arts at the Armory has submitted two proposals to the City of Somerville to manage the building on an interim basis while they continue their master planning process. We’ve offered to provide basic services like daily locking and unlocking of the building. Both proposals were ignored by the City of Somerville.

After three years of City ownership of the Armory building, City staff claim that their Armory Master Planning Process will conclude by the end of 2024. We do not have confidence that it will, as no other part of this timeline has been met.

In spite of these challenges, our organization continues to grow and flourish. We operated over 700 events this year attended by over 250,000 members of our community. For sixteen years, Arts at the Armory has been the anchor tenant of this historic building and for much of that time, we have served the roles that have now gone unfilled under City ownership.

Thank you for completing the survey and participating in the final Master Plan meeting this week. We will close the survey on June 7th and share the results with our community and the City. We’re grateful for your ongoing support.

The Center for Arts at the Armory Board of Directors: Hathalee Higgs, Neil Berman, Ruth Faris, Ivan Abarca and Amanda Klein

The Center for Arts at the Armory Co-Directors: Stephanie Scherpf and Jess White

Some Arts at the Armory Stats
Video of City Council meeting at which eminent domain was voted (start at 00:29:00)
Boston.com article following eminent domain decision
City Presentation: The Armory & Our Arts Ecosystem

April 30, 2024

We’re coming up on a year since the City’s last round of Armory Master Plan meetings and our own August 15th Community Meeting, which resulted in collecting over 1,000 signatures urging the City to take four concrete actions related to the Armory building, none of which have yet transpired. After delivering the petition to City Hall, it took four+ months for the City to announce their response and next step: another round of 4 more meetings, 3 of which have taken place. The 4th is scheduled for May 15th 6pm at Community Baptist Church.

Somerville Arts Council (SAC) and the City’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (OSPCD) has said that the input collected from these meetings will help the Armory Master Plan get written. The first and third meetings were sparsely attended; the turnout at the second meeting was a bit better. But at each meeting, the largest two contingents have been City staff and Armory tenants. It is clear that these are the two contingents mostly deeply embroiled in the matter, and the meetings have not brought in the wider cross section of the community as was hoped. Anyone who would like to review the recordings of the meetings can do so here.

Although we’ve asked the question, we’re not sure who is writing the Armory Master Plan, as the consultant previously hired (Create Today) has been sidelined to do research. We can only assume that SAC or OSPCD is writing the plan. We provided introductions and suggested the City get help from New Atlantic Development who has brought projects such as Hibernian Hall, Midway Artist Studios, and Brookside Artist Studios to fruition. At our request, SAC and OSPCD met with New Atlantic once.

We’re also coming on three years since the City took possession of the Armory building. What has the City accomplished during this period of building ownership? Early on, an Existing Conditions study/report was completed for the Armory building as part of a City of Somerville Community Services and Activities Master Plan but none of the findings from that report have been budgeted for or acted upon to our knowledge. In Spring 2022, Create Today was engaged as a consultant but we’ve been left wondering how/if their work will be completed. After some trial and error between 2021-2023, the City instituted light common area cleaning by DPW, who has also serviced the building and grounds with some minor projects, while others have been left pending.

Since December 2023, Arts at the Armory leadership has met monthly with Greg and Michael from SAC, and Rachel and Ted from OSPCD. Ward 5 City Councilor Naima Sait has also participated in most of these meetings. While these meetings have provided a forum for discussion and to ask questions, there has been little forward movement related to obtaining a lease agreement. We have been without a lease agreement since June 30, 2023. Since our last lease expired, we have been waiting to review a sample lease or license agreement with a one month duration as we’ve been told that’s all we’re eligible for under the terms of 30b (we’d have to renew the lease or agreement every month).

One very discernable thing that’s happened since City ownership was the City’s activation of a Warming Center from January 8 – March 31, 2024. There were many issues that arose for Armory tenants during that period, too many to go into here. The Somerville Nonprofit Collaborative circulated a survey to collect feedback about the Warming Center. Feedback from the Arts at the Armory Co-Directors related to the Warming Center can be found here.

While the Warming Center was active, the City instituted a Code of Conduct and Building Hours for the Armory. Neither was ever reliably enforced, and since the Warming Center has ended, the City has not responded to Arts at the Armory’s second of two proposals to steward the building, and has ceased locking / unlocking the doors or maintaining the declared public hours for the building. Now we have the City’s final Armory Master Plan meeting, which is about “governance.” We urge our community to participate in this meeting on May 15th 6pm at Community Baptist Church and to ponder this question: do you want the City of Somerville to govern a building that they have not yet managed to lock and unlock on a daily basis?

February 29, 2024

We have made suggestions to staff at Somerville Arts Council (SAC) and the Office of Strategic Planning and Development (OSPCD), who are conducting the additional series of four Armory Master Plan meetings, to issue a survey to get compilable, actionable data related to the Armory Master Plan if they are still seeking input. They appreciated the suggestion and are looking into it.

On February 8, 2024, our Co-Director/CEO Stephanie Scherpf spoke at a City Council meeting. You can view the recording here starting at about 00:29:00. Orders put in by Councilor Sait, and co-sponsored by Councilor Burnley and Councilor Wilson were sent to the Housing and Community Development Committee, and joined with other orders submitted by Councilor Strezo, where they were further discussed on February 28, 2024 with Arts at the Armory leadership and City administrative staff present. In addition, Arts at the Armory leadership continues to meet with staff from SAC and OSPCD on a monthly basis to work through issues related to City ownership of the Armory building.

January 22, 2024

The City’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (OSPCD) and Somerville Arts Council (SAC) have recently provided details related to four more community meetings about their Armory Master Plan process. Please see below for more info.

While we too are a bit weary from so many meetings, and we don’t know exactly how the meetings will be run or how the input gathered will be used, we are nevertheless asking our community to participate in this meeting series and make your voice heard. We encourage you to come prepared to share what you think is the appropriate role of government in operating and managing spaces in the Armory. We are advocating tirelessly for the community that we serve and we do need our community to accompany this process.

Right now, our key focus remains the four items below that over 1,100 members of our community endorsed in a petition.

1) abandon the proposed Model 1 for the Armory building (City as owner and operator model, which would force current tenants out)

2) adopt a 3rd party operator model for the Armory building that would include developing and issuing an RFP that 3rd party operators interested in managing the building would respond to

3) develop and issue an RFP for prospective arts/culture tenants interested in securing a lease on a space inside the Armory building

4) work with a consultant contracted by the City and current Armory tenants to create a governance model and governance committee that would develop, issue, and respond to both RFPs above

We have repeatedly expressed to City administration why it is imperative for the health of Arts at the Armory, as well as the health of the arts ecosystem of Somerville and beyond, that the Armory Master Plan process be moved along more expeditiously, and they quickly move to create and share an inventory of spaces in the Armory, the RFP process, and a proposed rent structure and governance model. June 2024 will mark 3 years of City ownership of the Armory building, and two years of the Armory Master Plan process. The lack of progress over the past nearly three years via the Armory Master Plan has thwarted our progress, growth, and service to the community, and must be addressed.

January 2, 2024

After four months of silence from the administration, we received a phone call from Mayor Ballantyne; we had an “individual tenant” meeting with City staff represented by the Somerville Arts Council, OSPCD and DPW on December 12th; and we had a group meeting with other Armory tenants on December 14th.

Here are some of the takeaways from the discussions:

-As a reset from the community meetings held by the City-hired consulting firm that occurred last July, the City is planning to hold 4 more community meetings related to the Armory Master Plan. Please stay tuned for more info but they are likely to take place in Jan – April. We encourage our supporters to please engage in this round of community meetings and make your voices heard.

-The Arts at the Armory Board and Co-Directors agreed that we would start meeting monthly with the relevant staff from Somerville Arts Council and OSPCD. This is an addition to the monthly meeting Jess has with DPW.

-As we are still without a current lease, we were asked to look into proposed options for a lease vs. a license agreement, and let City staff know our preference. We are currently exploring the legalities and terms related to both.

-Despite rumors that we were not paying rent, we provided clarification to the City that we have been paying the rent we agreed to in our original negotiation. Furthermore, we were able to express our grave concerns about the exorbitant increase in rent that we were asked to pay under city ownership while most of the building remains vacant or is being utilized by Somerville Arts Council.

We felt more optimistic after these meetings, and we will fully engage in the ensuing followup and keep our community apprised of our progress.

October 2, 2023

The Center for Arts at the Armory (CAA) held an important hybrid in-person and virtual community meeting attended by approximately 100 people on August 15, 2023. Please see below for a Zoom recording of the meeting, including a presentation made by CAA Co-Directors Stephanie Scherpf and Jess White, a Q&A session with the community, and comments made by community members attending the meeting.

At the meeting, CAA presented our case for a petition to the City of Somerville related to the Armory Master Plan and future proceedings related to the Armory building. CAA circulated the petition for 30 days and obtained 1,130 signatures in support of the petition. The petition is now closed. The petition was available in Spanish, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. Journalist Ryan Dilello wrote this article for the Somerville Wire following the August 15th meeting.

Over a month has passed, and CAA leadership has not received any communication from City of Somerville administration on the matter. Two orders and one resolution related to the Armory building and the Armory Master Plan were placed by Ward 5 City Councilor Bea Gomez-Mouakad at the August 24, 2023 City Council meeting. These orders were discussed at the September 20, 2023 Housing and Community Development ((HCD) Committee Meeting. A video of that discussion is available here. Stephanie Scherpf was also invited to speak on the topic at the HCD meeting and at the September 28, 2023 City Council meeting.

As promised, CAA has presented this packet of information to the Mayor, Somerville City Council , Somerville Arts Council and the Armory Master Plan consultant, Create Today and the Somerville Armory Master Plan Advisory Committee.

The petition created by Arts at the Armory urges the City of Somerville to do the following:

abandon the proposed model 1 for the Armory building (City as owner and operator model)
adopt a 3rd party operator model
issue RFPs for a 3rd party operator and for prospective Armory arts/culture tenants
create an Armory governance model

WHAT OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS ARE SAYING

“I also just want to say I was on the Council when the Council voted to take this by eminent domain. Never in a million years did any of us think that that would lead to displacing Arts at the Armory. The idea was folks like you were under threat, and the city was seeking to protect you all to keep this… I’m not able to speak on behalf of the Council, but I do want to say I very strongly believe that that was the intent of all of us. It may be an unpopular thing to say, I actually feel very optimistic that the City is ultimately going to do the right thing here, and and I know that all of us will be doing everything we can to help.”
—Ben Ewen-Campen, Somerville City Councilor Ward 3

“Whatever needs to happen so the community can all understand how important this place is, how big this place is. We’ve gone through maintaining and holding on to stages from very small stages to clubs, being shut down every single month after the pandemic, and we need to save this stage right now. “
—Clay Fernald, BB Presents

“I want to say something very important. I sat in many, many planning meetings, and I’ve learned more today about what happened with this building in 2 hours. …I don’t design an operating room without the person who cleans it, the nurse, the person, the electrician, all of those folks. So I think it’s very important.”
—Beatriz Gomez-Mouakad, Somerville City Councilor, Ward 5

“This is the soul of our City here. This is the soul, and of course the Media Center, too. You’re the bookends of culture in this City.”
—Denise Provost, Former MA State Representative

“Full transparency would be ideal. I would like to know who is making the final decision as to the final choice of whatever model is being adopted. This meeting held by the CAA tonight demonstrated a lot of community support for their stewardship, so I hope all city entities involved in the Master Plan Process will consider that in choosing a model for adoption. Disrupting the balance of what has already been achieved here might be a great and regrettable folly.”
—Petition respondent

“The Center for Arts at the Armory is a gem of the community. CAA’s talented staff provide a diverse array of arts programming that is unmatched in its accessibility, affordability, and inclusivity. It is part of what makes Somerville a great place to live. “
—Petition respondent

“I have come to understand that the process the City started to determine the future of the facility was well intentioned but very poorly executed. I think the City did the right thing to take the Armory by eminent domain, but seems to be biting off more than it can chew in actually trying to operate it. I think it’s pretty clear that the City doesn’t have the bandwidth to manage this entity and should let another party do it.”
—Petition respondent

“I am also concerned about the lack of clarity and commitment from the City to the current Center for the Arts at the Armory and other arts tenants. It is so cognitively dissonant on so many levels, that it does boggle the mind that the City could even contemplate any other scenario than to continue to promote and enhance what CAA is already doing so exceptionally well.”
—August 15th Community Meeting Participant

August 2023

A year into its ownership of the Armory building, the City instituted an Armory Master Planning Process and hired a consultant team, Create Today, based out of New York, to guide this process. With the Master Planning Process now underway for over a year, the City and Create Today presented for consideration two models for the future of the Armory building. Model 1 proposes “the City as owner and operator” of the Armory building, giving the City full control of the building and its programming. In this model, the Center for Arts at the Armory would be dissolved, and other current Armory tenants would also need to vacate. Model 2 is dubbed “Multiple Tenants,” which proposes the City as the building manager that rents spaces to chosen artists or arts organizations/business, and is similar to how the Armory has existed for nearly 20 years, with the exception that the City would remain as building manager and choose who can occupy the building to fill their chosen arts mandate. While we do not support either model proposed to go forward in the Armory Master Plan Process, the second model at least does not make us obsolete, but still leaves our future in question. During Armory Master Plan community meetings held by the City of Somerville in July/August, City officials had taken the 3rd Party Operator model off the table. CAA and others are now urging City officials to reconsider the omission of the 3rd Party Operator model, and to involve current arts tenants, including CAA, in future plans related to the Armory building.