WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — The Center for Cartoon Studies is nearing its fundraising goal for the purchase and renovation of the old telegraph building at the corner of Gates and Currier streets.
The school announced this week that it has raised $2.8 million of its $3.3 million goal for the project and is now soliciting donations from the wider public.
Moving into the telegraph building promises to open the 20-year-old cartooning college up to the wider community while also reopening a long-dormant historic building, CCS president and co-founder Michelle Ollie said Thursday.
“I know this is going to be a creative help to the community,” Ollie said.
The building has served as storage and studio space for the cartoon school since around 2007. Under the school’s ownership, it will provide students with an accessible, above-ground campus that will include studio space, a production lab, archives, a research library and a bookshop that will sell comics and graphic novels.
Since its founding in 2005, CCS has been housed in the former Colodny’s Surprise Department Store on South Main Street. Through a donor, it also took ownership in 2012 of the ornate former post office building across Main Street from the Hotel Coolidge. In the Colodny building, CCS leases the street level and the basement; several years ago, the lower level flooded, adding impetus to finding a new, more permanent location.
The school has been helping its landlord, the Vermont State Housing Authority, which rents out apartments on the upper floors, to find a new tenant for the Colodny space, Ollie said.
The telegraph building was built in 1922, when it was a hive of switchboards and employees. The building has been added onto twice, and as part of the purchase, CCS had to facilitate the subdivision of the property. The telephone company will continue to operate out of the newer structures, while CCS took possession of the 1922 building.
The purchase price was under $300,000, Ollie said, but included responsibility for the subdivision and a state-managed process for environmental remediation. The building also lacked most mechanicals, including heat on the first floor, and the first floor windows have been boarded up for years.
The environmental work and demolition are now nearly complete, and construction is due to begin soon, the school said in its announcement.
The initial budget for the project from 2023, was nearly $2.1 million, but higher costs for remediation and for construction materials pushed it to $3.3 million, Ollie said.
Some of the funding has been through federal and state sources, including a $971,000 federal grant through the Northern Border Regional Commission, and $185,000 in tax credits from the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development. An anonymous foundation has donated money for energy efficiency work.
“We’re continuing to reach out to prospective funders,” as well as to the general public, Ollie said.
Owning the building and having a more permanent home cements the cartoon school’s place in White River Junction.
“To see that building come to life, our community is so excited about it,” Ollie said.
For more information about the fundraising effort, go to cartoonstudies.org/telegraph.