Kenosha---Kemper Center, the county-owned complex of buildings on the city's lakefront, hasn’t been a girls’ school for decades. But some parts remain unchanged, like a pair of empty floors above Simmons Auditorium that were used as dormitories. The dorm rooms, of varying sizes, largely remain as they were when students moved out for good four decades ago.
Now the non-profit that runs Kemper for the county is looking at turning those rooms into work spaces for artists. With a minimal amount of remodeling, Kemper executive director Lisa Dretske believes the rooms would make excellent lofts for artists and give Kemper another revenue stream. "Any type of way that we can get more people coming in and out of Kemper gets me excited," she said.
Dretske believes the views from those floors--Lake Michigan on one side and the Kemper arboretum on the other--would be especially appealing.
Cost estimates are still being worked out, but Dretske says the money to fund the project would be raised from private sources. The project, she envisions, would include very few structural changes.
Because it owns the Kemper buildings, the county would have to sign off on the plan.
Dretske says she's been in contact with Francisco Loyola, one of the arts activists who's been pushing to turn a vacant downtown Kenosha storefront into an arts center that would include common-space work areas for artists and offices for various non-profit arts organizations. Dretske says she and Loyola don't believe that the two projects would conflict.
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