Council approves lease agreement for future Santa Paula Art Museum

October 19, 2005
Santa Paula City Council

The Santa Paula California Oil Museum will have a new neighbor after the City Council approved a plan for a famous collection of paintings to move in next door.

By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesThe Santa Paula California Oil Museum will have a new neighbor after the City Council approved a plan for a famous collection of paintings to move in next door. The council enthusiastically endorsed the Santa Paula Museum of Art taking over property just east of SPCOM to construct a new gallery to house a famous collection of paintings.The council approved the $1 a year lease at the October 3 meeting for a new museum that would replace the now shuttered Union 76 gas station. City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz said that the city garnered a sublease on the parcel that would allow the new museum to sublease for 33 years.Bobkiewicz noted that the city remains in negotiations with recently sold Unocal to transfer the parcel and the oil museum - where the company was founded 115 years ago - to the city prior to the closing of the deal with Chevron. “Meanwhile,” he added, “we wanted to make sure that the Santa Paula Art Museum” had the lease to allow them to move forward with efforts to raise the approximately $5 million cost of the new museum.“It’s wonderful to be here to finally and hopefully be prepared to sign the lease,” said museum Board President Mary Alice Orcutt Henderson. City Attorney Karl Berger and the museum’s attorney have been working “almost continuously” on the deal that has delayed fundraising efforts. “My question is: is the lease ready to sign?” asked Henderson, and Berger held out a pen.
Architect Doug Nelson of Mainstreet Architects told the council that “With our bookend museums,” the park at SPCOM will become larger and more accessible. The design of the new building, which could include a future second floor addition, will be “in context” with the historical Queen Anne SPCOM structure, as well as with the buildings in the immediate corridor, noted Nelson.The Santa Paula Art Museum will be ground zero for the collection of about 400 artworks collected by the city, school districts and Blanchard Community Library. More than 100 paintings that had belonged to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital are now held by the city.The collection started in 1937, when the annual Santa Paula Art & Photography Show was launched and different public entities purchased winners. Art collectors also later donated paintings to the various entities that own the collection.The effort to start the art museum started about four years ago, when members of the Santa Paula Historical Society and other supporters started the effort to create a museum for the famous collection.



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