Artful Moves: A New Home for the Cleveland Heights Arts Hive

Artful, the Cleveland Heights artists collective formerly housed in the Coventry PEACE Campus, has a new home: the former St. Alban’s Episcopal Church a few blocks west of Coventry PEACE , at 2555 Euclid Heights Boulevard, at the corner of Edgehill. Thanks to “generous, anonymous donors,” Artful bought the 20,000-square-foot building May 23 for $300,000 in cash, according to Artful co-founder and board president Brady Dindia. Cuyahoga County valued the property at $1,472,600 in 2024.

“Now, whatever happens is in our realm of control,” Dindia added, referencing the past half-dozen years dominated by a dispute between Coventry PEACE and its former landlord, the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Libraries Board of Trustees. While Artful wanted to stay where it was, the library board wanted Artful out, claiming it couldn’t support the building, let alone pay for needed repairs. Communication between Artful and the board ranged from nonexistent to heated, and the enmity between the Artful co-founders and Library Board director Nancy Levin was palpable.

Levin has said she will retire next February.

“I  don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” said Artful Executive director Shannon Morris Friday. Morris co-founded Artful with Dindia in 2017. “We were kind of waiting for it to come through—when it came through. It’s exciting but also more responsibility for me, which I’m ready for.”

The former church was built in 1993 after a disastrous fire destroyed an earlier church building on the same property in 1989, according to episcopalassetmap.org. Prior to Artful’s purchase, it sat vacant for five years and needs a lot of work—including a new sprinkler system. It can’t stage major events like Artful’s annual Lantern Festival until that system is installed, which requires more fund-raising, Morris said. The building will have to be cleaned, and a “vision plan” prioritizing what has to be done and in what order must be devised, Morris said, adding Artful is working with architect John Williams. Williams is known for his work on several arts venues, including BAYarts’ renovation and remodel of the former Huntington Playhouse, the conversion of a former electrical transformer station into the museum known as Transformer Station (now operated by the Cleveland Museum of Art), SPACES Gallery in the former Van Roy Coffee building, and the downtown Heinen’s. Williams will “help us rebrand the building as us,” Morris said.

Artists who will move into the former church include: Tondi Allen, Jacqui Brown, Jim Freedman, Fern Haught, Natalie Isvarin-Love, Donna Marchetti, Neal James Martin, Sylvia Munodawafa, Amy Neumann, LaSaundra Robinson, Samuel Silverman, Bryce Wadal, Emily Wadal, and Nancy Winkelman. (Robin VanLear, the founder and longtime director of Parade the Circle, has negotiated her lease at the Coventry PEACE campus through the end of September.)

“We have room for more,” said Morris.

“I think there are going to be celebrations,” said Neal James Martin, a ceramicist known for his fanciful MeBah figurines, “It’s all good now. All the pain and suffering of the last few years is done.”