From eyesore to eye-catching: Alley project unfolds minus a large sculpture
May 22, 2024 | By Sandy Yusen | Correspondent
Looking through the alley, the old Lee Jeans painted sign is visible on the right brick wall. A new mural will fill a boarded-up window space further down on the left. Photo by Gordon Miller
Over the last few weeks, the Stowe Street alley is quickly transforming from an eyesore to an eye-catching addition to downtown.
Peeking through the construction fence, passersby can see the components of the first phase of the alleyway nearly put into place. The old cracked pavement has been removed, and electrical conduits and drainage pipes have been installed. A winding pathway of bricks is visible, many with engraved names and messages, flanked by concrete pavers and open spaces of dirt awaiting in-ground gardens.
The momentum of the alley’s facelift has increased rapidly since the groundbreaking event last month, which followed three and half years of planning. Karen Nevin, executive director of Revitalizing Waterbury, reports that it should be ready for a grand opening celebration by June 1. “We will be inviting the community down for what we are calling a brick walk,” Nevin said. The event will be the first chance for those who bought a brick in the project fundraiser to look for their message in the mosaic, she added.
Officially ‘Jack’s Alley’
The initial phase of brick-laying used unmarked bricks. Photo by Gordon Miller
A key project detail recently was completed: confirmation of the alley’s name. Until now, the project has been referred to as the “Stowe Street Alley” for planning purposes. Working with town staff, state approval was secured to officially give the spot the name “Jack’s Alley.”
Waterbury Zoning Administrator Mike Bishop said the choice was cleared to ensure no duplication in state records and it is now registered with Enhanced 911. The system automatically provides a caller’s location to 911 dispatchers. A sign will be placed on site and the name will eventually appear in internet searches, Nevin noted.
The new name honors community member Jack Carter, an original owner of the Stowe Street Emporium gift shop beside the alley. Affectionately known as “The Mayor of Stowe Street,” Carter passed away in 2021. Refurbishing the alley into a pleasant public space was something Carter championed. “It was really, really important to us to get that name,” Nevin said.
Sculpture plans shelved
While the project occupies a relatively compact footprint, its planning and design has not been without complications.
After a somewhat rocky design and permitting process, Revitalizing Waterbury says that the decision has been made to put plans for a large sculpture at the alley’s Stowe Street entry on hold.
Project planners made the call as the latest plans elicited numerous questions and considerations from its design to the installation details.
The project committee last spring chose the Montpelier architectural design and fabrication company FlyWheel Industrial Arts to design the sculpture. The goal was to have a dominant artistic piece to catch attention and draw people into the alley. It also needed to fit in with the street’s historic buildings and capture the playful whimsiness of Carter’s original vision.
Over the last year, Flywheel proposed two design concepts, both of which faced hurdles in satisfying town zoning and public safety requirements. The first design – a gateway spanning the Stowe Street entry – was shelved after the fire department raised concerns about accessibility for emergency vehicles. The revised design was an 18-foot-tall steel arc with a hanging mirrored movable dome which prompted questions from the Development Review Board in April. The board scrutinized details about the mirror, the materials, and installation complexities.
It was frustrating, Nevin said. “It became public art being designed by rules and regulations,” she said. “We probably didn’t know the questions to ask at the beginning of the project.”
Nevin estimated that additional work to modify the design again and secure approval would take at least another 4-6 weeks and likely raise costs by thousands of dollars. “It wasn’t going to be easy, and it was detracting from the excitement of the alley project,” she said of the sculpture hurdle.
The project committee ultimately decided that it was more important to move forward with the groundbreaking and other parts of the project without the sculpture. “We decided to accomplish what we knew we could do, and we knew we had the permits for, and knew we had the money for, and that everything was ready to go. And there was an honest sense of relief when everyone agreed to stop work on that part of the project,” she said.
Waterbury Rotary member Dan McKibben has been part of the alley planning group. He said these challenges are typical of public projects. McKibben got involved with the alley project and entryway sculpture when he served as Rotary president in 2020-2021. “There’s inherent complexities, technical complexities, design complexities, many constituencies between the town and statewide arts organizations that provide grants and many stakeholders like the adjoining property owners that we needed to work through,” he explained.
View from above Jack's Alley looking toward Stowe Street. Photo by Gordon Miller
The alley project committee has not given up on the idea of incorporating a sculpture into the site. “The idea of having a significant work of art is not gone, it’s just taken off the plate right now,” Nevin said. “What we’ve agreed is that come next spring/summer, as we use and live in that space, we would like to commission a significant work of public art for Jack’s Alley. But we don’t necessarily know what it will be.”
The Flywheel team, whose contract was terminated once the project was suspended, was disappointed. “Yeah it was a letdown,” admits co-owner Jesse Cooper. But he said his team also understands the dynamics of public projects that involve many stakeholders and require merging regulatory requirements with aesthetic considerations. “If you’re going to do this type of work from an artist's standpoint, you really need to be ready to respond to a lot of different concerns and ideas, and so we kind of just tried to ride that wave and be as involved and as flexible as possible,” he said.
The alley committee has retained Flywheel to design and fabricate other smaller parts of the project such as benches, screenings for utility panels and planters. Those designs, Nevin said, will be inspired by elements already present: “brickwork that riffs off of the red bricks, metal of the existing fire escapes, the two historic buildings flanking the alley, echos from the railroad tracks, and the historical roots of the area as a hub of industry.”
Back to the drawing board
The decision to pull the plug on the sculpture for now leaves one piece hanging in the balance: a $15,000 Animating Infrastructure grant from the Vermont Arts Council. The grant supports projects where public art is integrated into infrastructure projects in communities. Revitalizing Waterbury was a previous recipient of this grant in 2018 for Phillip Godenschwater’s aluminum train sculpture on the North Main Street Railroad bridge near the roundabout.
In 2023, Revitalizing Waterbury was awarded a grant again to design and install “a welcoming gateway entrance to enhance the Stowe Street Alley,” according to the art council’s website.
Nevin said that RW has offered to return the grant funds, but the arts council has told the committee that they could apply the grant to another project component as long as the funds are used for artwork, the council can review revised plans, and the funds would be spent by the end of 2024. The alley committee is working on how to reallocate the funds in a way that honors the intent of the grant.
Michele Bailey, who oversees the arts council’s public art and cultural facilities grant programs, is familiar with the challenges inherent in the collaborative process of producing public art projects She said the council wants to see a significant artistic effort for the grant to fund in the alley project but, “we want to be flexible.”
Bailey pointed to an interactive map of the projects arts council grants have funded around Vermont, noting how they are all unique. “But this is one of those projects that is really hitting all the key criteria we look for where there’s a cross-section of partners contributing to activating a space,” she said. “Whatever they end up proposing back to us for the shift, we want it to be meaningful to the community, tell a story about the community, and contribute to revitalizing that space. And engaging the community along the way.”
Other art in the alley
In addition to the elements that FlyWheel is still working on, the alley incorporates artistic touches and original art in a few other ways.
For example, Nevin points to the overhead lighting as being artistically inspired -- catenary lights will be suspended across the alleyway framing an event space and creating an outdoor living-room atmosphere.
Well-known Waterbury artist and longtime friend to Jack Carter, Sarah-Lee Terrat is creating a mural for the project that portrays a window into an old-time general store with Carter as the shopkeeper standing behind the counter. The artwork is completed and will be installed over an existing boarded-up window on the exterior of the Stowe Street Emporium building.
Another artistic and authentic element is a faded advertisement for Lee Jeans painted on the side of the building at 21 Stowe Street, which Terrat will restore and repaint. After doing some research, Nevin said she estimates that it was part of a 1920s-30s advertising campaign from Lee Jeans, making it around 100 years old or more. The project team has reached out to Lee Jeans for their potential involvement but has not received a response, she said.
Fundraising continues
While the overall budget of the alley restoration has been reworked to remove the cost of the entryway sculpture, any savings have been offset by the increase in costs of materials and labor over the last few years. The total cost of the project is estimated at $230,000. To date, $130,000 has been raised through donations from local organizations, the Vermont Arts Council grant, memorial gifts given in memory of Jack Carter, the fundraising campaign that sold the engraved bricks for $100 each, and a $20,000 contribution from the town’s federal American Rescue Plan Act COVID-19 recovery funding.
To reach its funding goals, the committee is currently running a Better Places fundraiser with the goal of securing a state of Vermont Better Places fundraising grant. The state program supports community projects in village centers, designated downtowns and town centers by matching each dollar contributed by the community with two dollars from the state, thereby tripling the impact of each donation.
The fundraiser runs through June 14 and aims to raise $20,000 from donors to receive a $40,000 match from the state for a total of $60,000. As of press time, there were 108 donors and $13,545 raised. Nevin explained that the project will receive the matching funds only if the campaign reaches $20,000.
As the project nears completion those involved are eager for the community to see the improvement to the alley and begin using it. McKibben praised the collaboration among the groups working behind the scenes and said he’s looking forward to when it’s open for everyone to use and connect with. “Like our parks and other artwork that has been put up in the community -- whether somebody directly had a hand in it or not -- it’s something to be proud of as a community and makes it a more compelling place to either pass through, drive by or sit down and hang out for a while,” he said.
Flywheel’s Cooper underscores the collective impact projects like this can have. “Downtowns really benefit when they have these community anchor points that allow people to feel comfortable in public spaces with other people. If it’s inviting, if it’s useful, if it’s playful, if it’s comfortable, it just gives people a stronger sense of place and it kind of builds community,” Cooper said. “Especially in Vermont, these downtowns are so vital to giving a sense of group cohesion, to have a pedestrian culture, where people actually see each other face-to-face and spend time together casually. … It just makes people happy.”