WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The Veterans of Foreign Wars building, a bright blue structure next to the municipal parking lot on South Main Street, is getting a new life as a performing arts space following Northern Stage’s acquisition of the building late last week.
The recent acquisition is part of Northern Stage’s expanding footprint in White River Junction, which has been growing for some time.
The empty building “can become a children’s theater, can (show) small new works … You get a feeling that it’s a community gathering space,” Carol Dunne, Northern Stage’s producing artistic director, said in a Tuesday interview.
Indeed, for decades, the VFW building, equipped with two bars, served as a social space and a central hub for veterans.
But last fall, the VFW’s leadership body voted to close the building, which dates back to the ’60s, due to declining attendance.
“The world has changed a bit in how people use their time,” Normand LeBlanc, Department of Vermont State Commander for Veterans of Foreign Wars, said in an interview.
Younger people aren’t getting involved with the VFW as much as they used to and “passing away is an expiration date that we can’t change,” he said.
Even after the building closed, leadership hoped that it could be used by “people who wanted to care for the community,” LeBlanc said.
Northern Stage, which has been producing shows in White River Junction for almost 30 years, struck LeBlanc as a match.
“I understand the need for art; the need for expression,” he said.
The acquisition also seemed like the right fit for Northern Stage, whose leaders have been hoping to build an education center for some time.
“Really for about seven years, our education programs have been really pushed against the limits of our space,” Dunne said.
In 2015, the theater opened the Barrette Center for the Arts, a 17,000-square-foot performing arts space that cost about $7.4 million to build.
Northern Stage has an operating budget of roughly $4.5 million and employs 31 full-time staff members.
Last summer, the company unveiled a complex of newly-built apartments for artists and staff on Gates Street, just a short walk from the theater, that comprise 18 units and can house up to 24 people.
The project was made possible by a capital campaign that raised $8.5 million in private donations, $6.25 million of which went toward construction.
Northern Stage also owns three other buildings in White River Junction that contain 11 apartment units.
“We’re trying to build up the operation to meet where the art is,” Jason Smoller, Northern Stage’s managing director, said.
“We’ve been operating sort of as this scrappy nonprofit theater in White River Junction, and we are still that, and we’re trying to make sure that we support all the wonderful growth that has happened in the last 10, 12, 15 years,” he said.
An education center was originally part of the vision for the artist housing that opened last summer, but skyrocketing construction costs during the coronavirus pandemic meant the center had to be struck from the plan, Dunne said.
“Then we literally discovered that the VFW building was for sale, and truly, it was not in our plans,” Dunne said.
Northern Stage purchased the VFW building for $800,000, Smoller said.
The acquisition was funded through a combination of donations, a loan from Claremont Savings Bank and money from the theater’s budget.
The building will serve as a space for the theater’s camps and student productions as well as a “laboratory” for developing new work, Dunne said.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, “we have a hunger from our audience to see more and it really serves all of that,” she said.
She estimates the theater had 80 sold out performances last year.
“One opportunity might be to run something a bit longer on the main stage, and then have another production in the smaller studio space,” she said.
Northern Stage has minor changes planned for the 8,000-square-foot building such as installing a sprinkler system and painting the exterior, Smoller said.
He and Dunne hope to have the building ready for public programming by the middle of the summer.