Downtown Cortez is finally finding its footing. There are many people and entities who deserve thanks: landlords who have committed to keeping Main Street buildings filled, business owners who are creating a vibrant restaurant and entertainment scene, KSJD with its Sunflower Theatre, and more.
Before all that, though, the Cortez Cultural Center valiantly hung on as its board worked to bring programs and people downtown. Its success has varied over the years, and its programs have varied too, depending on funding sources, executive directors and board members. Its initial relationship with the University of Colorado ended years ago. Through it all, the Cultural Center has been a presence just off Main Street. The building, with its wonderful Buford Wayt mural of an ancestral Pueblo village, is a much-loved landmark in downtown Cortez, where visibly historic architecture is rare.
But the half block off Main is a problem, the building is prohibitively expensive to maintain and is not really what the Center needs — and funding is drying up. We applaud the board, and past board members, for their dedication in trying to raise funds. The failure is not theirs. It is not anyone’s, really. Despite many people’s dedicated efforts and best intentions, something different needs to happen now.
While the Hawkins Preserve is an asset to the Center and the community, it does not draw people to downtown or to Cortez in general. To most residents, it’s just another park. That view may be shortsighted, but it is difficult to equate the words “Cortez,” “Cultural” and “Center” with a mostly undeveloped archaeological preserve.
No one wants the building to close or fall into disrepair. It should be preserved and utilized. But the core mission of the Cortez Cultural Center is not historic preservation. If the Center can’t afford the building, that financial reality must be addressed, and the building – no matter how sentimental Cortez residents feel about it – cannot be the albatross that drags down the organization. That benefits no one.
The Cultural Center is a worthwhile organization that deserves saving. Like the Powerhouse Science Center in Durango, it is a good idea in need of a viable funding model. Its benefits to the community are intangible but real. For example, business owners who perceive little benefit from its presence may discover, too late, that it contributed more downtown traffic than they realized, especially since the value of downtown attractions is cumulative.
The community’s finances are stretched thin by the new high school; the hospital is asking for a tax increase for construction; the stock market is skidding downhill. This does not seem like a good time to ask people to support an organization whose benefits, while apparent, are hard to define.
Yet we hope the people of the area will provide that support, because the demise of the Cortez Cultural Center would be a serious loss.
If the Center cannot afford its building, we hope that a commercial enterprise can take over that space and make it pay. Put it on the market. The Cultural Center organization should not die trying to keep it up.
And then the board needs to figure out what its new mission must be. What niche remains? What is affordable and sustainable? What do locals and grantors want to support? How can those pieces fit together?
Once that mission is identified, find an appropriate space for it. That will be difficult but not impossible – as long as the whole organization is not weighed down by its beautiful, historic, expensive, inappropriate real estate.
Don’t let the past doom the Center’s future.
