The Community Agency Building is at 113 N. Chestnut St. in downtown Seymour.
Tribune file photo
Seymour Mayor Matt Nicholson’s vision is a theater for plays, musicals, movies, comedy shows, meetings and other events.
Whitney Thoele, a mental health practitioner at Southern Indiana Mental Health Clinic, and her fellow owners of the business vision expanding their clinic to offer more services.
The first floor of the Community Agency Building in downtown Seymour has been vacant since Indiana Health Center moved two years ago. The second and third floors mainly house offices for nonprofit organizations, which was the original intent of the building when it opened.
The Seymour Redevelopment Commission recently sought approval from the Seymour Plan Commission to purchase the building at 113 N. Chestnut St., requesting to amend the city’s economic development plan to add the parcel to the city’s plan and acquisition list.
During the Dec. 14 plan commission meeting, however, it was given an unfavorable recommendation by a vote of five for, three against and three absent, and six votes in favor of the request were needed to make it favorable. Bret Cunningham, Dan Robison and Rick Schleibaum cast the nay votes. Gary Colglazier, Darren Richey and Susie Bowman were absent.
During the Jan. 11 plan commission meeting, Nicholson again presented his proposal, providing more information and answering questions.
When the floor was opened to the audience, Thoele stepped up to the podium and said she has an investor who owns other downtown buildings and has made an offer on the building.
Now, it’s up to the Community Agency Building Inc. board to make a decision on accepting either offer. That board meets on the second Monday of each month.
Before the mayor spoke, Robison asked if the topic should be redocketed for the board’s consideration.
“We’ve established that we had a quorum at the last meeting. We took this matter upon ourselves. It’s a settled matter for this commission,” he said.
City attorney Christina Engleking said since this was a resolution that’s a statutory requirement to be fulfilled in order for the redevelopment commission to amend the economic development plan, it could be reintroduced.
She said if the resolution isn’t passed by the plan commission, the redevelopment commission could use funds it has available as long as they are not derived from tax increment financing money, and it could move forward with the purchase of the building.
“If the monies that are derived from TIF are planned to be used, a different avenue would need to be sought,” Engleking said.
Nicholson said when the redevelopment commission was formed in 2008, it looked at funding three areas: Industrial development, education and downtown. In 2021, quality of life was added. The mayor said his proposal for a theater on the first floor fits both downtown and quality of life.
He said the theater would have nearly 120 seats, and the city would keep the second and third floors “doing what they are doing,” providing nonprofits rental space at an affordable rate.
RQAW Corp. told him the first-floor concept is feasible, and letters of support from local residents ranging in age from 17 to 79 were received by the city.
“Of projects that we have done in the last four years, this covers more range than anything I’ve ever seen,” Nicholson said.
While he said some people think cities shouldn’t own buildings, Seymour received grant money to turn the rundown freight depot building on North Broadway Street into the home of the Jackson County Visitor Center, and it still owns that building today. He said the city owns 15 to 20 buildings.
Looking around the state, he gave examples of cities that either have a theater in their city hall or are working on a similar project in the community.
A few years ago, the mayor said while talking to Zach Thompson, a board member for Actors Community Theatre of Seymour, he said the nonprofit organization would love to be able to move downtown. It has been renting space at Shops at Seymour for 10 years.
Nicholson said the first floor of the CAB would provide them a permanent home to lease and share the space. Thompson told the plan commission ACTS’ plans for the space would include plays, musicals, movies, acting and writing workshops and more.
“Every show we do, somebody comes in and says, ‘Oh, I didn’t know Seymour had a theater,’ despite we’ve been here for 10 years where hundreds come to every show,” Thompson said. “The performance we did a couple of months ago, we sold out all seating, but in our space now, we can do 50, maybe 60 on a good day. When you’re doing that over and over, that’s when I first reached out about we need a space that is bigger.”
In other places where community theaters are successful, like Brownstown and North Vernon, Thompson said it’s because they are downtown.
“We pay rent to our space at the theater now, but it’s just we’ve outgrown,” he said. “It has been 10 years, and we’re not as big as we would like to be, but we are bigger than what we have currently. … It’s not possible in that kind of space to do something extraordinary that people from out of town are coming to.”
New plan commission member Matt Wheeler asked the mayor why he chose CAB for a theater. While the visitor center building was dilapidated when the city bought it, Wheeler said that’s not the case with the CAB.
“Why redo this building as opposed to finding another location that would be a bigger bang (for your buck)?” Wheeler asked.
“A bigger bang would probably be a bigger buck would be my first statement to that,” Nicholson said.
The mayor said since the first floor of the CAB has been empty, it has put some stress on the finances. If the city took ownership of the building, he said rent paid by tenants would go toward maintenance and upkeep, and it would be managed by a current parks and recreation department employee.
Nicholson also said the city’s first-floor occupancy rate in the downtown is higher than most cities in the state.
“We’re starting with a better base than some of them,” he said, referring to the condition of some of the empty downtown buildings. “We’ve got better bones than what some of the others do right now.”
Don Bruce, a member of the plan commission who was the CAB manager when it opened, said several communities have patterned the building’s concept, and he would like to see it kept as close to nonprofit use as possible.
“If your plan is to keep the second and third floors currently in place, then I don’t think I have any problem with the bottom floor being turned into some useful project,” Bruce said. “The building has got a lot of history and a lot of historic value (built in 1895).”
Thoele said she’s not against the theater, but she doesn’t think this is the right space for it.
Her clinic is on the third floor of the CAB, and they already have run out of space and have a wait list. Their plan is to keep all of the other current tenants on one floor and have the clinic on the other two floors, and they could add onto their staff to take people off of the wait list.
“We are passionate about what we’re doing,” Thoele said. “Take a minute and think of quality of life of going to see a show or getting your life back. That’s a really big comparison. It’s not going to cost tax dollars. We would be able to provide a full clinic with walk-in hours and stop plugging up our (hospital’s) emergency room at that point.”
Thoele said the ER needs to be only for medical emergencies, and there needs to be a separate walk-in clinic for people with mental health issues who need help immediately.
Her clinic serves a wide range of ages and mental health issues, and she said an expansion could help the business build on prevention, intervention, outreach and stability.
“I think it’s a little more exciting, in my opinion, to build on something that would impact our community by the thousands because of the ripple effect we have on families as opposed to 80 people sitting in a theater,” Thoele said. “I don’t know if any of you have looked someone in the eye that didn’t want to live or had just tried to end their life. We see it all the time. … We talked about quality of life. Let’s talk about the quality of life we can give these people.”
She said the clinic is contributing to the current health of the community and the future of it.
“I think the space could be utilized as something that would have an impact long term as opposed to an hour of fun,” Thoele said. “There’s getting the joy of watching a show, and there’s getting the joy of looking your child in the eye and knowing that they don’t want to kill themselves tonight. That stuff is happening every day, and we are doing everything we can to prevent that because statistics show that you know someone or are related to someone who has thought about it.”
Thoele said she spoke at the meeting because she wants the clinic’s voice to be equally heard in the process.
“We’re trying to end the stigma that is mental health,” she said. “You make a choice to go watch a show. You don’t get to choose if you have schizophrenia or depression or need medication. … I would likely frequent the theater if it’s here. I just don’t want that to be at the sacrifice of the mental health of our community.”