A Message from Stan Smith, Board President

Dear Members,

When I ran into members of the Art center in the community I am often asked about the future purpose of the new buildings, as well as their amenities.  I thought I would spend a few paragraphs explaining in bullets what you can expect to see when we start occupying the new and improved Rockport Center for the Arts’ facilities this fall. 

Building 1: Rockport Center for the Arts

Height: Two-story Building

Size: 14,000 sf

Purpose: Art Education, Visual Arts, Administration

Building Features: 5 classroom spaces including a standalone building featuring a fully equipped clay studio, 4 galleries, gift shop, elevator, restrooms in both floors, an administration suite, roof top terrace, connectivity through porches, state of the art audiovisual, loading dock

Building 2: Rockport Conference Center (The ROCC)

Height: One-story Building

Size: 8,000 sf

Purpose: Business Conferences, Trade Shows, Expos, Performing Arts, Media Arts, Culinary Arts, Literary Arts, the Home of the Clay Expo, Film Festival, Silver meltdown, Guy Clark Music Festival

Building Features: 4,500 sf ballroom supported by a 1,300 event foyer, restrooms, fully equipped catering and culinary arts kitchen (800 sf), a storage bay, partitions to break ballroom into 4 spaces separate spaces, state of the art audiovisual, loading dock

Offsite Parking: Located one-block away from the campus at the intersection of Magnolia and North St.

Size: 60 spaces

Sate of the Art Facilities: Other Campus Features:

• Fiber optic loop cable line for high speed internet solely dedicated and provided for the campus

• Services from Network Cabling Services of Houston, Texas and Layer One Networks of Corpus Christi for telephone, audio visual, structured cabling, Wi-Fi integration, and campus-wide security monitoring. 

• Underground electrical utilities.

• Resilient concrete and steel construction, elevated above FEMA requirements.

Hundreds of people- staff, Board members, volunteers and consultants, have put in thousands of hours during the past 8 years to make the dream of a new home for the Arts a reality. This dream will have a transformative effect on downtown Rockport, and the community which lost so much in August 2017.

Respectfully,

Stan Smith