By Jane Smith
Delray Beach city commissioners switched course in early April and rejected a plan by the Boca Raton Museum of Art to run operations at the Cornell Art Museum.
Instead, the commission will hold a workshop May 17 at City Hall and invite other arts groups to give their ideas for the future of the Cornell, one of five venues at the Old School Square campus in the heart of downtown.
Vice Mayor Adam Frankel and commissioners Ryan Boylston and Shirley Johnson voted against the Boca museum takeover at the April 5 meeting, Frankel said he did not like the idea of having an out-of-town group run a Delray Beach showpiece.
“If a Delray museum were to come to Boca, there would be marching in the streets,” Frankel said.
The city needs new management for Old School Square because commissioners voted 3-2 last August to end the lease with the longtime operators of the 4.5-acre campus when it ran out Feb. 9. The city took over some programming on the campus even before the lease officially ended.
City officials were concerned about how the former operators — the Old School Square Center for the Arts — were spending city dollars. Financial problems plagued the former operators for at least the past six years, according to a city internal auditor review done in August.
Boca museum leaders became interested in running the Cornell following the commission’s August vote, but they waited until the lease ended before meeting with City Manager Terrence Moore on Feb. 14 to discuss their idea.
That set up the commission’s 3-2 vote April 5 against the Boca museum offer. Johnson, who led the charge to end the lease last year, became the swing vote in rejecting the Boca museum plan.
Johnson said the proposal was not clear about the museum’s duties for the $125,000 it would receive from Delray Beach to run the Cornell. The money would have lasted until Sept. 30, and the Boca museum then would have needed to go through the city’s normal budget process to get further funds.
After the meeting, Johnson fielded calls from residents who complained her vote would allow the former operators room to reorganize and put together a plan to return next year, but she denied that was her intent.
“I’m hoping one of the local nonprofits will step up. I’m looking for one group to run the entire campus,” she said.
The spokeswoman for the former operators declined to comment when contacted about the commission’s vote.
Boylston said he wants to see a “Summer of Delray Arts” on the campus. He met with Moore on April 29 to review the format for the May 17 workshop.
Boylston would like leaders of his first tier of nonprofits — Arts Garage, Arts Warehouse, Delray Beach Historical Society and Spady Cultural Heritage Museum — to speak at the workshop. The public can’t offer input at the workshop unless a commission consensus allows it.
Vote surprises Boca director
The commission’s vote was unexpected for the Boca museum’s executive director, Irvin Lippman. He said he had spoken to most of the commissioners ahead of the meeting and the majority supported his museum’s taking over the Cornell’s operations, including Johnson.
“It came as something of a surprise,” he said of the final decision. “The political maneuvering seems to have taken sway. I can’t explain how.”
Lippman told commissioners his team had been on a “listening campaign” for the past month and wanted to create a welcoming environment for the diversity that exists in Delray Beach.
He wasn’t aware of the upcoming workshop. “They want to go in another direction,” he said. “We have plenty to do in Boca Raton to keep us occupied.”
Mayor Shelly Petrolia, who supported the Boca museum proposal, was embarrassed for Delray Beach.
“We had tasked Moore to give us options. At the March 1 meeting, he said the Boca museum leaders had contacted him about running the Cornell.
“We gave him consensus to move forward with the discussions,” Petrolia said. “It’s embarrassing to the city when someone comes in to operate a closed museum and they are denied from moving forward. We had the money and would not be dipping into our reserves.”
Concerts and finances
In other actions regarding Old School Square:
• The city has resumed holding semi-monthly concerts on the Pavilion stage on the OSS campus.
• The law firm representing the former operators responded April 8 to the Community Redevelopment Agency’s demand that the group return $187,500 in funding. It rejected the demand, saying the CRA had given the money after the operators had met the requirements for the first quarter of the 2020-21 financial year.
• The CRA staff is trying to obtain financial records the former operators used to receive a paycheck protection loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The first $309,735 loan was given in 2020 and later turned into a grant.
The CRA is trying to find out if the operators used any of the federal money to pay staff salaries. It is concerned about double-dipping, if some of its money went to pay for salaries already covered by the paycheck protection loan.
The CRA first requested the information from the USSBA, which said it does not have those records, and is now seeking them from the former operators’ lender, which does have them.
Mary Hladky contributed to this story.
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