KVMR will broadcast from its new building on Wednesday
Editor’s note: The current issue of our magazine features KVMR’s Bridge Street Project and the revitalization of the Spring Street neighborhood as an Arts District. The move to KVMR’s new digs accelerated this week. We enjoyed touring the new building at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival.
The first broadcast from KVMR’s new offices is planned for next Wednesday, and a public open house is set for March 14, Michael Young, director of the Bridge Street Capital campaign, told me today:
The articles are here:
KVMR & Nevada Theatre: The Bridge Street Project
KVMR 89.5 Community Radio and the Nevada Theatre Commission, assisted by the community at large, collaborated to build an 8,000 sq.-ft. building behind the historic theater at the corner of Bridge and Spring streets in Nevada City. It creates a new home for the award-winning radio station and adds needed backstage space to California’s oldest theater.
“The new radio station creates, with the Nevada Theatre and the Miners Foundry, a Performing Arts District in downtown Nevada City,” says Michael Young, director of the Bridge Street Project capital campaign.
The project is called Bridge Street because the building is located at 120 Bridge Street, joining seven houses that share that short street in downtown Nevada City. The project also “bridges” the radio station and the theater by connecting them at the theater’s back wall and enabling the broadcast of theater programming over KVMR’s airwaves.
The KVMR building includes a community room that doubles as performance studio and is open to area nonprofits for meetings and gatherings. The steel radio tower recently erected over the building serves as a new community cornerstone and will be atop a “community corner,” where people can congregate and view display cases of upcoming events. The tower also has a WiFi antenna to provide Internet service to the historic downtown. For more information, visit BridgeStreeetProject.org.
(Photo: Jessica Faulks)
Nevada City’s Spring Street neighborhood: An emerging arts district
Last year we wrote about an emerging food lovers’ neighborhood on lower Commercial Street in downtown Nevada City, anchored by the farmers market, annual farm-to-table banquet, the Boardwalk and the new Three Forks Bakery & Brewing Co.
In the new year, across town, the Spring Street neighborhood is being revitalized. This includes a new building for KVMR Community Radio next to the 150-year-old Nevada Theatre, a new planned coffeehouse FoxHound Espresso, and the new DANK at Osborn/Woods Gallery at Miners Foundry Cultural Center—where history, arts and culture flourish.
The area also is home to Nevada City Winery, the restored Powell House, Sushi in the Raw, Mountain Pastimes for toys, and a new headquarters for the Wild & Scenic Film Festival.
“Spring Street is a happening place,” says Nancy Nelson, an arts-group volunteer and member of the DANK artists’ collective in Nevada City.
The Miners Foundry was the first manufacturing site of the Pelton wheel in 1879, the precursor to modern hydro-electric power. In the ’70s, San Francisco artists David Osborn and Charles Woods helped transform the Foundry into a full-fledged cultural center—for performing arts, a Victorian museum and radio station KVMR.
In January, the Miners Foundry and DANK, the collective of 10 local artists, launched a new fine art space, DANK at Osborn/Woods Gallery.
“We are excited to be working with DANK to enliven Spring Street with a rotating selection of curated fine art, workshops, soirees and a no-host wine bar,” says Gretchen Bond, executive director of Miners Foundry. “It is a gathering place where the community can relax while enjoying art, talk about their own work, and share their experiences.”
Spring Street also is home to the award-winning Nevada City Winery, the first bonded winery in Nevada County after prohibition. Founded in 1980 in a small garage on the outskirts of town, the winery moved to its present location in 1982, the historic Miners Foundry Garage, on Spring Street.
Nevada City Winery’s Mark Foster is one of the region’s most talented winemakers. “Nevada City is the perfect place to blend experimentation with a wonderful viticulture environment,” says Foster.
Other businesses along Spring Street include Sushi in the Raw. “The fish is fresh and pristine, and the environment in a converted Victorian boasts quirky charm,” as the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote.
A new coffeehouse is opening next door to Sushi in the Raw—FoxHound Espresso & Coffee Broaster. It is owned by Steffen Snell, a Nevada County native who has been making coffee since 1999, when he began as a barista in training at Dean & DeLuca in Washington D.C.
Besides opening FoxHound Espresso, Steffen plans to teach coffee brewing classes. His beans also are used in artisan ice cream. Treats of Nevada City’s “Coffee Broaster” ice cream is made with Steffen’s beans.
Further down the block, at Spring and South Pine streets, the historic Powell House has been renovated to its glorious past. Having fallen in to disrepair, it was rescued by the present owners—Brad Croul and Native American artist Judith Lowry-Croul—and is now a renovated house full of modern conveniences.
The Powell House has hosted art exhibits, wine tastings, weddings and music retails and is offered for rent. Judith’s work has been exhibited at the Wheelright Museum in Santa Fe, NM, Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., and Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.
(Photo: Douglas Hooper)