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Norfolk — Tidewater Community College plans to move its visual arts programs from Portsmouth to Norfolk, buying out the ground floor of a downtown building on College Place for an expected $2 million.
TCC’s Real Estate Foundation signed an agreement Tuesday to purchase the first floor of the Harbor Heights building, which includes both offices and condominiums. The foundation already owns three floors there housing several TCC offices.
TCC’s Visual Arts Center has occupied its current space in Olde Towne Portsmouth for years. But the lease for the property on High Street will expire at the end of June, TCC President Marcia Conston said Wednesday.
She said school officials had hoped to return the college’s arts programs to its downtown Norfolk campus to take advantage of nearby galleries, the NEON arts district and the Governor’s School for the Arts.
“This will be perfect. It’s right in the heart of the community,” Conston said.
The move isn’t a done deal yet, with college officials still carrying out a final inspection. TCC estimates a renovation would cost about $8 million and take between 9 and 12 months. To pay for it, the school is considering a new fundraising campaign.
Conston said TCC hopes the visual arts programs can move in by the fall semester of 2022.
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In the meantime, the college has already put plans in place to move visual arts classes from Portsmouth to Norfolk starting this summer. Students will work out of a couple of campus buildings for the next year or so before their new digs are ready.
The announcement comes seven months after the public collapse of a planned arts facility at the site of the now-defunct Greyhound bus station at the corner of Brambleton and Monticello avenues.
First announced in March 2018, the ballyhooed $20 million project was expected to be a towering glass-and-steel anchor for the NEON arts district. Major fundraisers attached themselves to the project early, including Douglas and Patricia Perry, for whom the new culinary and visual arts building was expected to be named.
However, fundraising stalled out pretty quickly thereafter. It was later revealed that January 2020, nearly 2 years after it was first announced, TCC had raised less than $4.6 million in cash and pledges for the $20 million project.
Last November, the Perry’s officially withdrew their pledge of $2.5 million, effectively killing the project.
Conston said Wednesday that TCC hasn’t “really taken any concrete action” to moving the college’s culinary program, though she said they’re still working on it. Those courses are currently taught in the Stanley Walker Technology Building at the corner of Granby and Freemason streets, alongside math and IT labs.
Ryan Murphy, 757-739-8582, ryan.murphy@pilotonline.com