Improvements will enhance experience
Storm King Art Center is embarking on a capital project which aims to enhance and sustain the experience of art and nature it offers to visitors, artists, and the community. Groundbreaking is expected to take place later this year with a 2024 completion target.
The project comprises of a new Welcome Sequence with consolidated parking and accessible amenities; the construction of a Conservation, Fabrication, and Maintenance Building; and holistic approaches to landscape stewardship and environmental sustainability.
Design work on the project, which is expected to cost about $45 million, began five years ago, but fund raising efforts began the year prior. To date, the art center has raised $43.5 million from more than 50 individuals and private foundations. New York State is providing $2.6 million in support and Empire State Development has agreed to contribute $2 million. Additionally, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is providing $600,000 through the Carbon Neutral Community Economic Development program.
Once the project is completed, visitors and artists who visit the center will be welcomed with a gracious arrival. The new Welcome Sequence will meet visitors’ immediate needs with a series of accessible pavilions offering hospitality and essential amenities such as orientation, restrooms, and group gathering spaces.
The easy-to-navigate parking area will be rich with natural landscaping and will eliminate visitors’ encounters with cars while exploring the center by removing the parking lots within the grounds and consolidating visitor parking to a forested edge of the site.
Each pavilion will be constructed with natural materials to maximize functionality while remaining deferential to the landscape and art. The landscape will be carefully shaped and populated with native plants. The idea is to maintain the focus on the art in the landscape.
The Conservation, Fabrication, and Maintenance Building will create a facility to expand the art center’s ability to realize extraordinary projects and its support of artists’ visions on a grand scale. The building will serve as a workshop, studio, mechanical shop, storage space, and office. It will also be a home for creating and fabricating new work, particularly for exhibitions and the annual “Outlooks” program.
Located on the southern edge of Storm King, the building will fit seamlessly within the landscape. Parking lots within the grounds will be repurposed into landscapes for art. New meadowed areas in the north and south will naturally extend the existing space for art while providing a platform for exhibitions, temporary installations, and public programming, as well as reveal additional sight lines of Storm King’s forested edge.
Besides improving the experience for guests, the project aims to continue Storm King’s legacy of landscape stewardship and environmental sustainability. Buildings will be designed to use clean, all-electric renewable energy, and the landscape will be enriched with more than 650 newly planted trees to offer shade for visitors and promote biodiversity.
Achieving this goal will require utilizing natural air and light to efficiently reduce energy demand; using highly efficient all-electric heating and cooling equipment, which will result in reduced capital costs and long-term operational expenses; using sustainable and durable materials to reduce embodied energy and limit long-term maintenance demands; supporting biodiversity and site hydrology to enhance local ecology; and enhancing mobility to Storm King to reduce carbon emissions and promote staff wellness.
The capital project also supports the art center’s ongoing contributions to the cultural, educational, and economic fabric of the local communities of Cornwall and Orange County, as well as the larger Hudson Valley.
The project encompasses infrastructure improvements to external and internal roadways, including off-site traffic mitigation measures. The parking area will be designed to promote and support the use of public transportation.
For more information about the project, visit stormking.org/capitalproject
