After a devastating flood, Scarborough Arts looks at 'different ways to connect to community'
This article was written by Mike Adler and originally published in the Scarborough Mirror
The January flood that severely damaged the Scarborough Arts building happened during conversations about the organization’s future.
Scarborough Arts and its partner Mural Routes have worked for decades in a converted house by the Scarborough Bluffs.
Given the city-owned structure’s limitations, should the arts organization and its partner Mural Routes stay?
“That’s actually a really big question we’ve been asking ourselves,” Derek Spooner, Scarborough Arts’ executive director, said in an interview.
After work to open and dry the walls and a March 10 inspection with a contractor, the group decided to repair the damage while renovating the building to make it more accessible.
Although the facility is not expected to reopen until early next year, the group plans to offer programs and events at other locations starting this spring.
“One day at a time,” Spooner said.
“We’re still very vital.”
Two women walking by Scarborough Arts on a Friday in January saw water streaming out a second-storey window of the Bluffs Gallery and saw its ceiling had partly collapsed.
A few days before the flood, staff of the arts organization returned to the building and found it cold, turning electric heaters on.
A work order for the heating system was sent to the landlord, the city, but January 14 was exceptionally cold and a pipe in a third-floor washroom burst, flooding the gallery, offices of Scarborough Arts and Mural Routes and storage areas full of posters, newsletters and other archival materials.
The Arts and Crafts-style house, built in 1927, didn’t have a heating system before it was donated to the city as part of a park called Harrison Estates.
Notes written for a Doors Open tour in 2018 by Meng Bao, a student, say members of the Harrison family slept in winter in what is now the gallery’s main room because it has a fireplace.
Much of the house at 1859 Kingston Rd. remained as it was, making it hard for people with mobility devices to reach the gallery or use the washrooms.
“It really holds back a great number of art participants,” Spooner said.
Renovations planned before the flood to meet Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requirements — including a key-operated outdoor chairlift, washrooms improvements and doorways downstairs — can revitalize the building and many people’s relationship to it and Scarborough Arts, he said.
At such a watershed moment, members of the group, founded in 1978, are imagining how it can deliver regular programs and activities elsewhere in Scarborough, perhaps in a more central location with major transit service.
The flood “really pushes those thoughts forward,” said Amanda Singh, administrative and operations co-ordinator.
“We’re thinking of different ways to connect to community.”
Though three quarters of the building was flooded, most stored works of art in the house were stored in attics that saw minimal damage, she said.
The group says it would appreciate one-time or monthly donations to its General Operating Fund.