It's turning into a REAL SOB

​Well, the cat is out of the bag, and many of you know that Shaun and I bought the building on Broadway Street that was most recently called The DNO Building. Aquiring the building has been a lenghty process with serious inspections that took months. We started in August (I believe) and closed in December. 

so we've had many months to ponder how to use the space. The main purpose of the building for us is to have a place in town for Griffith Contracting. The west end of the building has a shop that works perfectly for the guys, and the parking lot across the street is big enough to park our equipement in. although it has been exhausting, moving everything AGAIN, It is amazing to have everything for Griffith contracting in one place finally! But as you know, the shop on 6th street is a small piece of the pie, since the building is roughly 33,000 square feet in total.

​we've been hearing a lot of, "What are you gonna do with all that space?"  and trust me, we've asked ourselves the same question many times. So here it is.... Here's our plan (as of today).

It's such a giant building, we've decided to approach the space in phases. We dont have a timeline yet, but we have 3 phases and we hope to start phase 1 this spring.

Phase 1:
Since I rent the space on Main Street, known as Zanny Art Studio, it is only logical to move my studio to the building that we pay a mortage on. The downtown space has been a great experience and I have learned SO much, including how many people around here want to create and need a place to do that in. So we've decided to turn the front office space of the building (3,000 square feet) into four studios. We will have a pottery studio where classes will be held but also memberships will be available to the public. We will have a woodworking shop where classes will be held and also memberships will be available to the public. And we will have a silversmithing studio and a painting studio where classes will be held. 

Running through the four studios, there will be a fine art gallery that hosts different art from different artists. The gallery will have a juried panel who will decide what is sold in the gallery, so all artists are welcome to submit their work to the gallery. There are thousands of details that we're working through but we will be advertising and sharing with the public when things start to happen. We hope to be an asset to this community, and to inspire positive change.

​And finally, we'll be refferring to this new space in this historic building as Studios on Broadway, or Shops on Broadway, in short, The SOB Building.

As things go, our plans might change. But this is where we're at now. We have plans for phase 2 and phase 3, and I'll do some follow-up posts about those plans. In the meantime if you're a history buff, here's an article on the history of The SOB building.
https://lewistownlibrary.org/2019/10/22/from-the-library-archives-history-of-the-ford-garage-by-nancy-watts/
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