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Arts Academy Expanding On East Haven's Main Street

Lucy Gellman | July 14th, 2020

Arts Academy Expanding On East Haven's Main Street

Education & Youth  |  Arts & Culture  |  Theater  |  COVID-19  |  East Haven

 

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Zoom.

An East Haven performing arts academy will be expanding its footprint and looking ahead—to a time when student actors, dancers, and musicians can gather again in person, and their parents can stay and watch from the audience.

That’s the plan for the New Haven Academy of Performing Arts, which last week received unanimous approval from the town’s Planning & Zoning Commission to add a 100-seat theater to its space in East Haven’s West End neighborhood. The approval came after months of deliberation over parking requirements and fire code.

The approval is contingent on a 135-person limit, two ongoing lease agreements for parking, and a review by the commission after one year of use. Neil Fuentes, a teacher and veteran chef who runs the academy with his husband Billy DiCrosta, said he is ecstatic after months of back-and forth with the commission.

“When I was six years old, in Venezuela, I did my first play, and that day I said that one day I wanted to have a place to do my own theatre,” he wrote in a message after the hearing. “Dreams come true.”

The idea for the theater has been over six months in the making. For five years, DiCrosta and Fuentes have run the school out of a building on East Haven’s Main Street. In a normal year, the academy serves roughly 300 students per week, including several who live across the state and commute into East Haven for lessons.

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During COVID-19, the two have made the pivot online, along with four of their instructors. The academy is still hosting small summer camps in person, using guidelines from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All performances for those are streamed, rather than inviting parents into the building. Meanwhile, several other summer lessons and camp options have remained virtual.

The theater will mark a 2,700 square foot expansion on the current space, located at 597 Main St. in the town. It is designed strictly as a performance venue for students learning dance, vocal performance, musical theater and instrumental music.

Performances will be held only on weeknights and weekends when surrounding businesses are closed, as not to overwhelm the area with cars. For DiCrosta and Fuentes, having a brick-and-mortar space of their own is more cost effective than renting from spaces such as area high schools.

“This program is largely for the benefit of the students,” said Attorney Robert Pethick, who is representing the academy. “It’s not a not-for-profit, but at the same time, it’s only within their realm to try to open it within the property to make it feasible for them.”

The proposal for expansion, which came before the board multiple times before winning approval, has received an outpouring of support in the community. At the commission’s monthly meeting in June, dozens of parents testified in support of the theater (watch that meeting here). After the item was tabled before a vote, Fuentes launched an online petition that over 1,000 parents, grandparents, and alumni signed. Many wrote in with emotional testimony about the effect performance has had on their kids’ confidence and anxiety levels.

Despite overwhelming public support, pushback on the expansion has come from members of the commission, including Chair William DeMayo. Before voting, he asked several times whether the academy had considered hosting its performances in an existing building, where parking would not pose a problem. He and Planning and Zoning Director Christopher Soto have also voiced concern around safety and fire code, including a visit from East Haven Fire Marshal Mark Nimons.

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“No one has asked the question—what impact, positive or negative, how will it impact the neighborhood,” DeMayo said. “One hundred and fifty added people on a performance night, maybe two nights. How does that impact, on a negative or a positive, the area? That’s a tight area down there. There isn’t very very much parking. Where are these people all gonna go?”

Plans for the space were also almost scuttled by the town’s parking requirements, which Desegregate CT has recently identified as one of the biggest roadblocks to inclusionary zoning in the state. In East Haven, Planning & Zoning requires one space per every three people in a car for theaters and public assembly halls. The academy has asked for a 100-seat theater, which means 33 parking spaces. That does not include public parking on Main Street, of which there is an abundance.

After a hearing last month, Fuentes and DiCrosta worked with neighboring businesses to secure parking spots for the space. Sixteen spaces now come from an agreement with Steve “Big Steve” Tracey, who owns and operates a tow truck rental company next door. An additional seven spaces came from their neighbor Steven Mancuso, who runs Hart Industries on Doran Street. The commission voted to give one space exception, meaning that the theater will operate with 32 official parking spaces rather than 33.

Broadway Dance Owner Gina Helland, who operates her business next door, suggested that the theater will be an economic boon to the neighborhood and to the town. As an arts instructor, she has watched parents drop their kids off for lessons, then spend money on nearby coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants, and stores. For years, she has been waiting for neighborhood revitalization efforts to come to her part of Main Street. They’re never arrived.

“I have been there for 26 years, basically doing what my coworkers here, my partners want to do,” she said. “All we want to do is make the space better. And a little bit bigger. This is student-based shows. We are not looking to open a theater on Broadway where we have shows and bands and all kinds of stuff going on. These are intermittent performances done by the students … I think I can count on one hand the number of parking complaints.”

She urged commission members to think about the space as a potential economic driver, calling the hearing “a parade, charade that I’m watching that is literally slipping away from us because of a parking space.” Prior to COVID-19, the state’s arts, culture and tourism sector generated nine billion dollars, 57,000 jobs, and five percent of Connecticut’s economy, according to Americans for the Arts. Since March, Helland has seen East Haven businesses, including her own, crippled under the weight of the pandemic. 

“We need this,” she said. “Our parents spend money at the Village Diner. They spend money at the laundromat. They spend money at Tolli’s [Apizza]. Bistro Mediterranean. Every restaurant, every business. Sugar Bakery. None of them even live in East Haven, and they’ve been turned on to East Haven. This is a good thing.”

“I have dedicated my life to educating our youth,” she added. “I’m asking all of you to do the right thing here. We’re squabbling over parking. You know how many municipal buildings in East Haven do not have enough parking?”

Tracey, who runs his business around the corner, also advocated for the expansion.

“Billy runs a good business,” he said.

A Dream Realized

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DiCrosta and Fuentes. New Haven Academy Of Performing Arts Photo. 

For both DiCrosta and Fuentes, who live in New Haven, the approval marks the expansion of both the literal space and their dream as arts educators. Born and raised in East Haven, DiCrosta founded the academy in East Haven because he wanted a safe haven for kids who didn’t feel accepted in their schools or in their homes.

DiCrosta was one of those kids. As a teenager, he was bullied so savagely that he ultimately moved in with extended family in New Haven, to finish high school outside of his hometown. He said he can recall the feeling of watching the East Haven school bus pass his house, while his 14- and 15-year-old peers yelled homophobic slurs out the window, turned around, and mooned him.

“The reason I opened in East Haven is I wanted a safe place for kids to come to that I didn't have growing up,” he said in an interview before the hearing. “This town, still to this date, is not an arts intensive town.”

Like Helland, he sees the theater—like the academy—as a space that can spur economic development. While COVID-19 has meant seeing most of his students through a screen, DiCrosta suggested that the theater will ultimately bring business onto Main Street.

“We are bringing money into the town because people are coming into the town to spend money,” he said. “They’re bringing commerce into the city and helping the economy.”

Now that the board has approved the expansion, Fuentes and DiCrosta will be working to ensure that the building is up to code, start electrical work, and invest in a stage and sound equipment. Fuentes said that the hope is a space that will be ready by winter 2020.

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