After years in the dark, sunlight is once again streaming through the arched windows of Fort Collins’ Center for Creativity.
The city arts hub at 200 Mathews St. recently wrapped up a roughly three-year-long renovation and will reopen to the public Saturday. The facility shuttered at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and remained closed as it completed pre-planned improvements and, later, started its larger renovation that was approved as part of the city’s 2015 Community Capital Improvement Program.
The renovation involved the installation of a new staircase, a full revamp of the center’s 3,000-square-foot community gallery space and two large meeting, or “flex” rooms and the addition of a smaller “flex” room in the building’s lower level. Since the center’s building was originally built as Fort Collins’ Carnegie Library in 1903 and 1904, its large arched windows were also delicately restored as part of the project.
Until this renovation, the windows had been boarded up and painted over since 1978, when the building went from being the city’s library to its museum, according to Eileen May, the new director of cultural services for the city of Fort Collins.