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Resident Artists and Theater Companies: Michigan Classical Repertory Theatre Some of our friends and colleagues: Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority Ypsilanti Convention and Visitors Bureau Ann Arbor Area
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Riverside Arts Center, Fall, 2006, Newsletter RAC Foundation Board establishes strategic plan Earlier sessions covered the first step in its MISSION Statement: “The mission of the Riverside Arts Center is to nurture a dynamic arts and cultural environment that builds community by connecting artists and audiences in the Ypsilanti area.” VISION: The Board’s next step was to describe what it hopes to accomplish: If RAC were to accomplish its mission, how would the world be different? “The Riverside Arts Center envisions Ypsilanti as a vibrant, economically healthy community known for its welcoming environment, its adventurous creativity, and its broad range of arts and cultural offerings that appeal to audiences and artists of all types.” The VALUES statements articulate the codes of behavior and beliefs that underlie the way those associated with RAC interact with one another and with the public, a sort of “rules of engagement” for nonprofits. The Riverside Arts Center values: The Arts Center set GOALS and STRATEGIES to organize its work as it fulfills its mission. These goals describe the end points the Center wishes to accomplish during a specific period of time: Bill Kinley: creative force at Art Center's helm Growing up in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, Kinley remembers frequent trips to Cleveland museums as a child. As a student at the University of Michigan, he tells of first “discovering” Ypsilanti on the way to UM’s laboratory #45 at Willow Run Airport––later the home of the Yankee Air Museum that was destroyed by fire in 2004. “My Ph.D. dissertation there was on fancy math,” Kinley remembers. His topic: “The generalized lagrangian and its application to constrained least squares problem.” Perhaps it burned in the fire? All that driving through Ypsilanti alerted Kinley to the community’s built environment and his first investment was a multi-family property at 219 N. Huron. Six or seven more properties followed and soon he brought his “fancy math” to the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority. “I suppose that’s where the Genesis of the Riverside Arts Center was,” says Kinley. “We negotiated for the DDA to buy JJ’s Atomic Car Wash on North Huron Street. When we finally got the property, we tore it down for a parking lot and then Art McVicar, Barry LaRue, and I started wondering about that old Masonic Temple building next door. Kinley’s problem solving skills came into play for Ypsilanti’s economic development. Then used for storage by Reynold Lowe of Materials Unlimited, “the old Masonic hall seemed the right match for the Hyatt/Palma study that identified North Huron Street as a future arts and entertainment district.” Kinley’s company, Phoenix Contractors, moved this summer from right in front of the RAC on Pearl Street to Golfside Road in Ypsilanti Township, a building Kinley has owned since 1989 and rehabbed about six years ago. A former handball court is now the atrium outside Kinley’s new office. “My office may be a bit farther away from the Arts Center,” says Kinley, “but my heart is still at the Riverside Arts Center.” “RAC’s future is just as exciting as its recent past as we expand our scope of offerings through the DTE building. Construction of the stair/elevator tower is taking longer than expected,” he notes. But that’s just another creative opportunity for this highly creative problem solver.
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