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By Greg Stepanich, ArtsPaper Writer

Delray Beach’s Arts Garage, an arts performance space featuring theater, jazz, blues and pop, opened five years ago last month on the bottom floor of a parking garage on Northeast First Street. Its director for the first five years was Alyona Ushe, a Russian-born arts professional whose background includes the founding of a Washington, D.C., theater company and the executive directorship of the New Orleans Opera.
Arts Garage was the outgrowth of a 2006 cultural plan adopted by the Delray Beach City Commission, and implemented by the Creative City Collaborative with major funding from Delray’s Community Redevelopment Agency. Although the Garage was almost immediately successful in establishing itself as an arts venue, it had a couple near-death experiences over its lease, its funding, and its management, particularly after the Creative City Collaborative expanded into Pompano Beach in 2014.
Ushe resigned as Arts Garage’s director April 4 (she was replaced by Keith Garsson) to concentrate full-time on the Collaborative’s work in Pompano, where a new cultural center is being constructed. Ushe spoke with Palm Beach ArtsPaper in her offices at Pompano Citi Center about the financial controversies that accompanied her last months at Arts Garage, and what she’s planning. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation:

Stepanich: You left Arts Garage on April 4. Did you want to leave, or after the appearance before the CRA, did the higher-ups say, “Alyona, maybe you want to think about doing something else”?
Ushe: The fact is the cultural center that we are beginning to open here (in Pompano Beach) is a beast. It is a huge undertaking. And my passion has always been launching new entities. I did that in D.C., I did it at Arts Garage. And so as I was looking at everything, and the choices we were facing, it seemed like it was the perfect time for me to really focus on the next big thing, which is so critical, and which we were responsible for already.
Arts Garage has a foundation, Arts Garage has got the programming. I have a very clear conscience in terms of leaving it where it is, as it is. We’ve gone through all the major hiccups, so we were definitely on our way out of the misunderstandings. And it was really becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our financials were not in disarray. The first audit addressed some of the improvements that needed to be made. The current draft we presented to the (City Commission) addressed those issues, and that was before this (controversy) started.
So it just seemed at that time that we had more important things to focus on, that were really critical, that required our attention, and so my senior staff and I picked up and left. We’d been talking about this a while.
S: But apparently you didn’t have the kind of accounting the CRA wanted.  
U: I think it was just a perfect storm, to be honest with you. The whole roller-coaster ride started with us submitting our report late. The reason why that report was submitted late to the CRA was because we had to finish the audit. And the audit was late because of some additional information the CRA was requesting.
Now again, all I had to do at that time was put in a written request. I should have re-read the contract. I should have been aware of what it is that I was supposed to have done to avoid this. But to withhold $70,000 just because the report was submitted late seems to me a punishment that surpassed the crime.  
And that started the whole snowball rolling. And it picked up momentum. And the city looked at us and said, “Your management let us down. We don’t have all the credit card receipts.” What they didn’t mention was that out of a sample of 30, we were missing two. And instead of listening and trying to understand what the situation was — we’re supposed to be partners. We’ve created something absolutely magical that every other city is trying to emulate. And we were in a challenging situation, and that’s when the city should really have come together.
Now I’m not blaming anyone. I think in the end, everything worked out for the best. In the end, it has forced the organization to pay much more attention to details. But as we were going through this, the question that popped into my head over and over again was, “Considering the crime, is the punishment really appropriate?” And we were this close to closing our doors. We had no funds coming in.
S: $70,000 is not really a great deal of money.
U: Not for the city, no. But for us, as an organization that has lived payment to payment — we would submit a budget, and we would typically break even — you take (the CRA funding) out of our budget, and what do you do? For the CRA, it’s nothing. For the city, it’s nothing.
But again, I think everything happens for the best, it happens for a reason. And in this case, the reason was that we needed to tighten the organization so that nothing like this ever happens again. And for me personally, that is a lesson I will never forget.
So (now) when it comes to contracts, I have the whole thing memorized. I can tell you every single letter and every single paragraph no matter how big the document is.
S:  What kinds of programming were you encouraged to bring to Arts Garage when it got started? Did they say: We need jazz and blues?
U: When I first came to interview, and I was meeting with key officials, the description was very vague at that time. There was something about the cultural aspects of Delray Beach, there was something about the (projected Arts) Warehouse, a whole bunch of stuff. And I remember specifically asking, “What exactly are your expectations?” And the response was, “That’s for you to figure out.”
Which was daunting at that time. I mean, how do you go into a foreign city and you’ve got to figure out what your goals are? That’s almost a formula for failure right there. But with Arts Garage, initially, experimentation was critical. First of all, I believe in diversity of programming. So the more interesting things you can put on stage, the more you mix it up, the more audiences get involved and engaged. ...
There’s a lot of experimentation to be made, and I think, and I hope, and I wish for Arts Garage that they don’t get boxed into doing jazz and blues, and that they do continue to be creative and try different things. Because there is nothing more damaging or more frightening for any arts organization than inertia.
There will be seven judges for the competition: Andrés Cárdenes, Charles Castleman, Gudny Gudmundsdottir, Daniel Heifetz, Ilya Kaler, Vera Tsu Wei-ling, and Elmar Weingarten.