The Austin Parks and Recreation Department is moving forward with replacing the Dougherty Arts Center in South Austin despite uncertainty over funding for the two-phase development plan, the parks department said in a recent memo.
The proposed arts center’s campus would include a Smithsonian-caliber gallery space, a 2,600-square-foot black box theater and studio spaces and classrooms. The campus is planned to be built next to the parks department’s office west of Lamar Boulevard between East Riverside Drive and Toomey Road, adjacent to the ZACH Theater
The Dougherty’s current building on Barton Springs Road sits on a sinking landfill and received an “untenable” designation from a conditions assessment in 2010. The Dougherty was built in 1947 as a temporary Naval and Marine Reserve Center and donated to the city in 1978.
The current building has a host of issues, including disintegrating plumbing, failing roofs and Americans With Disabilities Act issues, according to Laura Esparza, former division manager of the parks division of museums and cultural programs.
“(The Dougherty) is pretty essential to Austin’s art ecosystem,” Esparza said. “It’s the place where many artists get their start. It has 30 exhibitions a year and many artists have the opportunity to have their work shown, sometimes for the first time.”
Multidisciplinary artist Daniel Llanes, 75, began his Austin career at the Dougherty shortly after it was acquired by the city in the early 1980s.
“The Dougherty was very supportive of me as an artist,” Llanes said. “For years and years and years the Dougherty was almost the only cultural facility that the city of Austin had. It has history. Nobody else has history like that. It has history like the Armadillo World Headquarters had history. It has history like the Gaslight Theatre had history. It has history like the Victory Grill has history.”
Esperanza says the building’s redevelopment project has been a long time in the making.
The new Dougherty Center will grant even more programs to Austinites than were previously available. The 56,000-square-foot building was designed by Studio 8 in conjunction with Dougherty staff over three years of community input. The project design document says it incorporated Austinites’ feedback to serve a rapidly growing city and “to create a future-oriented arts center.” The new space would open new programs for photography, welding, textiles, jewelry and more.
Lucky Lemieux, president of the Friends of the Dougherty Arts Center, has worked closely with Dougherty staff, the city and community on the redevelopment project since 2012.
“It made a big difference that the people served by the art center were in favor of its design and its location,” Lemieux said. ”It's going to be able to serve a lot more people than it has in the past. It will be able to offer more programming and more services.”
Lemieux says the new design gets pretty close to meeting Austinites’ wish list for an arts center. In addition to room needs, the redevelopment team asked community members about the current feeling and character of the Dougherty Center. Feedback described its kitsch charm and creative spaces to be important. “I want to amp up the professional standard we hold ourselves to, which a new building will do. But no matter what, I want people to always feel joy here,” said one respondent.
Lemieux says the proposed location next to Butler Shores provides more opportunities to collaborate with the neighboring Zach Theatre.
The new development will be split in two phases, according to Austin Parks and Recreation Department project manager Alyssa Tharrett. She says phase one will construct the building’s shell and parking structure funded by a $20 million bond approved by voters in 2018. Construction aims to begin before the end of 2025.
The second and final phase of the project has yet to acquire funding for the estimated $30 million price tag. The parks and recreation department is working to include the project in a proposed 2026 bond election. If the bond does not pass, the building’s shell will remain empty until the parks department gets additional funding, Tharrett says.
The Austin City Council has not yet voted on the two-phase project plan, but Lemieux says forward movement is urgent.
The parks and recreation department began planning the center’s reconstruction in 2008 and completed initial designs in 2017 with a $28.5 million budget. Tharrett says the cost has grown to about $60 million because of higher construction costs following COVID-19-related delays.
“The (Dougherty Arts Center) isn’t going to hold up anymore, and it could be closed any time,” Lemieux said of the current building’s structural integrity.
Removed the part about 10 council districts because (1) the old location is just as central as the proposed one and (2) real people don't tend to describe geography in terms of council districts.
Lucky was saying being centralized was pretty important during the redesign process. She specifically noted the 10 districts. Opponents scoped out many locations, but the DAC staff and community insisted on a central location