Village Mayor Has Big Plans For Southampton Center

Like a blank canvas or a slab of marble, the former Parrish Art Museum building at 25 Jobs Lane sits full of potential—and a group of Southampton Village residents and officials are ready to begin turning it into a work of art.

The planned Southampton Center, slated for the site, has been envisioned by the village and the Founders Committee, a group formed specifically to plan the center’s future, as the new hub of arts and culture in the village after the museum moved to its new home in Water Mill in November.

According to Mayor Mark Epley, limited programming should begin this summer, including a possible weekly summer film series hosted by actor and part-time East End resident Alec Baldwin, who has expressed interest in supporting the Southampton Center.

In the meantime, much renovation must be done before the center can open its doors—the former Parrish structure will be reconfigured to allow an increase of traffic flow into the building and to address years of patchwork repairs and additions. To get the ball rolling, approximately $10 million must be raised, according to village officials. An additional $1 million is needed to build a proposed outdoor pavilion that would shelter shows, concerts and community events while the building undergoes renovation.

According to Mayor Epley, Mr. Baldwin has offered to help with the task by coming up with the idea to host a summer film series and eventually develop a relationship between the center and the Hamptons International Film Festival. The mayor said a film festival would be the least expensive way to focus enthusiasm on the site.

“He’s very into the project,” Mayor Epley said. “He’s very supportive of what we’re trying to achieve.”

In 2011, Mr. Baldwin donated his compensation from his Capital One credit card advertising campaign to the East Hampton Library, the Hamptons International Film Festival and Guild Hall, among other charitable organizations both locally and nationally. According to Mayor Epley, Mr. Baldwin mentioned that he may donate funds from his next Capital One campaign to the Southampton Center next year. Mr. Baldwin declined to comment through a spokeswoman.

Stressing that the space would not be devoted just to fine art and film, he added that the Founders Committee has a wide range of ideas that would transform the building, which is owned by the village, into a multi-purpose space for all kinds of groups and institutions. In the office space above the main floor, art classes could be held, he said. Lectures, like last fall’s event with Bob Woodruff and Chris Cuomo of ABC News, who shared their war stories, could be a regular thing. In the middle of the building, theater-in-the-round performances could be enjoyed while others browse the village’s own art collection.

The mayor said he envisions Southampton-based public radio station WPPB 88.3 FM moving into the building, possibly where the art museum’s gift store used to be. A radio audience could listen while drinking coffee at the center’s cafe. The Founders Committee and the radio station are still negotiating that possibility, he said.

“This is a potentially huge economic driver for the village,” he added. “It’s been underutilized. We have to maximize its use and spur interest. We have to get people to understand, this is their building.”

Built in 1897 to house Samuel Parrish’s collection of Italian Renaissance paintings and 19th-century plaster casts, the Jobs Lane structure underwent three phases of construction, designed by Grosvenor Atterbury, through 1913, when it was expanded to its present-day cross shape. In the 1950s, an addition of vault and office spaces was added to the northwest corner, which completed the present-day structure’s form, encompassing 17,000 square feet on a property of just under 3 acres. A fifth addition, two vaults and storage space, was built in the 1970s.

Because there were so many additions to the building, its main floor elevation varies from addition to addition, sloping up and down with stairs and ramps.

According to the mayor, the architectural firm in charge of the renovation, Machado and Silvetti of Boston, plans to level the floor to ease access to all the rooms of the building, and has recommended eliminating the most recent additions to bring the building back to symmetry.

Many people may not know that the original entrance to the Parrish Art Museum building was not through the wrought iron doors that open to Jobs Lane, but through a small doorway on the eastern side of the building, not far from the stone Caesars that line the walkway there. The mayor said that using that original entrance, now an emergency exit, would be a good way to increase access and reintroduce the direct path into the museum that Mr. Parrish used to take from his home, what today is the Rogers Mansion on Meetinghouse Lane, part of the Southampton Historical Museum complex.

There will be other entrances as well—the architect has proposed a box office and entrances on the eastern side of the building flanked by two covered sidewalks.

While he said the structure is sound, the mayor bemoaned the roof’s current condition. The slate roof hasn’t been replaced since its installation in 1913, he said. “In the 1980s, they talked about replacing it,” he added.

The mayor is optimistic about the Southampton Center’s future but said he realized it’s largely dependent on how much the Founders Committee can raise. “Our goal is to keep the building from being financially supported by the taxpayers of Southampton Village,” he said.

Machado and Silvetti will present their conceptual plans for the building at a Village Board work session on Tuesday, March 26, at 5 p.m. Instead of holding the meeting at Village Hall, the meeting will be held in the building itself at 25 Jobs Lane.