WORCESTER — When Laura Marotta and Stacy Lord started Creative Hub Worcester back in 2015, they knew exactly where they wanted to have the organization’s home base.
The Ionic Avenue Boys Club building was “the perfect spot” for a community arts center, said Marotta.
“It had been a community center for nearly 100 years and deserves to be revitalized,” she said.
Now, after 10 years, Creative Hub Worcester will soon come home.
Groundbreaking for the renovation is planned for late spring this year, commencing the $10 million project, the funds for which Creative Hub has gathered since the organization was formed including a $500,000 loan from UMass Memorial Healthcare .
“This concept has been in the forefront of our minds since the beginning,” said Marotta.
The arts center will include a 200-person event space, studio areas and collaborative work spaces, a gallery and an artisans market with capacity for over 100 vendors.
“This is huge for Creative Hub,” said Marotta. “This is going to be an extremely large expansion of our programming and organization.”