Gateway city arts facing uncertain future, asking community for help

July 7, 2020 | Danielle Eaton
DanielleE@thereminder.com

HOLYOKE – Faced with financial struggles due to the impact of the coronavirus, Gateway City Arts in Holyoke has closed their doors until further notice in an effort to eventually reopen after the pandemic.

Partners and co-owners, Lori Divine-Hudson and Vitek Kruta founded Gateway City Arts to provide musicians with a welcoming and comfortable venue to perform at. In addition to a concert hall, Gateway City Arts is also host to a variety of workspaces for local entrepreneurs, a cafe and a restaurant.

Divine-Hudson said the restaurant “had been opened for two months,” prior to the coronavirus. “People loved it, we were successful, the music was going,” she said. “We were on the road to being known.”

Kruta said they began asking patrons and concert-goers to report any symptoms or sickness in early February. However in early March, the cases of coronavirus began appearing in Western Massachusetts, causing worry. “In early March, when the pandemic started to appear, people started talking,” Divine-Hudson said.

“On March 10, there was a concert with 500 people in the concert hall, 150 in the small theater, and 50 to 60 in the restaurant. At that point we realized we are so crazy leaving this open,” he said.

“We decided it was too risky for us, my 95-year-old mother lives with us. We didn’t want to take any chances,” Divine-Hudson said. “We were worried about our staff, worried about everyone.”

They saidthat’s when they made the decision to close Gateway City Arts, about two weeks before Gov. Charlie Baker’s stay at home advisory.

Divine-Hudson said following the concerts and their closure, they quarantined and laid off staff, much like others in the area. “We furloughed people, we all quarantined for two weeks, didn’t do anything for two weeks and then did the food to go,” she said.

Kruta said this was before they realized how bad the impact of the pandemic truly would be. “We had no idea how bad it was going to get,” he said.

Divine-Hudson said the food “hasn’t taken off the way we hoped.” However, she said given a typical month’s expenses to run the center, due to various licenses and insurances they must carry, “are close to $10,000 and $11,000,” it has been difficult to remain open. “With no income that’s unsustainable,” she said.

Kruta said without alcohol sales from concerts, it has been difficult to make the money needed for their monthly expenses. “It is unfortunate, but venues make most of the money like this on alcohol sales. We don’t like the fact that this is how it is, [but] having a concert with 500 people buying drinks really paid what needed to be paid,” he explained.

Now, the pair are shuttering their doors and asking the community for financial help to try to ensure Gateway City Arts stays open through the pandemic. Kruta said rather than continue to do takeout, which has not been incredibly successful in sustaining their finances, they will close the doors to Gateway City Arts until further notice. “Once we crunch the numbers, we realized by hibernating [and] canceling everything we have a better chance to survive,” he said. “It’s better than keeping people on payroll, opening the restaurant or partially reopening.”

Kruta said he foresaw Gateway City Arts “being closed or hibernate until at least the end of the year.” He said they would think about reopening once they “see if there’s a vaccine [or] see if people fee safe out there.”

While they didn’t have a definitive re-opening date, Divine-Hudson said they planned to continue paying the bills for as long as they were able to. “We’re going to keep going as long as we can pay our bills,” Divine-Hudson said. Although she added, “it’s kind of a race between running out of money and getting a vaccine. The future is uncertain, we don’t know.”

Kruta said while people in Massachusetts may feel like the pandemic is coming to an end because businesses are beginning to reopen, Gateway City Arts relies on traveling acts and musicians, making it difficult to return to business. “You might think this is great, now we can open. We cannot open with these bands because they are traveling the country,” he said.

Gateway City Arts closed their doors on July 3.

In an effort to reach the community for help, Divine-Hudson began a GoFundMe page seeking donations. She said while the decision to close their doors was “heartbreaking,” the support they’d received from the community had been incredible.

“So far it’s been quite wonderful to see the community response. We just appreciate the donations,” she said. “We built this, started with just the two of us, but over the years we’ve had an amazing team of people working for us, who believed in our vision [and] gave 100 percent to make this happen.”

By the time of press, the page had raised more than $20,000 of the $70,000 goal.

Though the pair acknowledged that reopening the business, whenever that may be, would be difficult, they planned to exhaust every option available to continue to remain open. “If it comes to that then we will be looking for different ways of doing things that we do. We might ask to find sponsors, that could be a big way of getting started, someone sponsoring programs,” Kruta said.

Divine-Hudson said the pair was proud of what they’d accomplished since beginning Gateway City Arts and felt like they had a lot left to do. “We’ve spent nine-years building this, the two of us, and we had just felt like we made a dent in the valley. We’re vey proud of what we’ve accomplished,” she said.

Those interested in donating to the GoFundMe can do so online at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-gateway-city-arts or by sending a monetary donation directly to Gateway City Arts at 92 Race St. Holyoke, MA 01040.

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