Major donation marks launch of arts centre fundraising

The donation also marked the launch of the ARTicipate fundraising campaign for the centre Monday, Sept. 24 at a packed house in the Orléans Theatre. Coupled with previously dedicated provincial funding of $2.5 million, the money means ARTicipate has already reached 70 per cent of its $5 million campaign goal. “Arts Ottawa East is extremely grateful to (chairman) Bill Shenkman and the Shenkman Family Foundation for their generous donation,” said Christine Tremblay, AOE’s executive director. “Through their support they have not only launched AOE’s endowment fund campaign, they have also set a positive example for other philanthropists in the city of Ottawa. As strong believers in community building they have become our champions, recognizing that a wide variety of social and business issues are closely intertwined. By strengthening the fabric of our community in one area, they are strengthening it in others at the same time.”

Money raised by the ARTicipate endowment fund campaign will support the five partner arts organizations – AOE, the Gloucester Pottery School, Mouvement d’implication francophone d’Orléans, the Orléans Young Players and the Visual Arts Centre, Orléans (VACO) – to take up residence in the centre after completion, said campaign manager Sandra MacInnis, as well as finance arts initiatives within the centre and assist in bringing projects with a more citywide mandate to the Orléans area. “We need to find creative ways to fund what the community needs and what the community wants,” she added. “This is one such way – it creates a sustainable core of funding for local artists and arts organizations to help build capacity. With a goal of $5 million, we’re hoping to exceed that obviously … and invested prudently, that’s going to be a material amount of money to assist these organizations.” “(The Shenkman Corporation) is, and has been for about the last 100 years, one of the biggest land developers in the Ottawa area,” said Bill Shenkman. “A lot of the work that we’ve done over the years took place in the east end. So I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to give something back to this part of town. My father (Harold Shenkman) always wanted to do something like this in the city, so it’s a combination of giving something back to the east end and doing something in the arts.”

Harold Shenkman was instrumental in bringing properties like the Gloucester Shopping Centre, Gloucester City Centre and Sutton Place – a 500-unit condominium apartment development in Gloucester – and the Queenswood Heights subdivision to the east end.

Negotiations with the Shenkman Family Foundation began back in January, 2006, continued MacInnis. “We’ve been keeping this a very closely-guarded secret through the course of finalizing all the P3 (private, public partnership) elements,” she said. “It’s exciting because we’re launching our campaign today, and we’re already successful.”

Mayor Larry O’Brien also lauded the efforts of all parties involved, noting both the Shenkman family’s long, dedicated involvement with the city and Arts Ottawa East for assuming leadership in the arts centre project. “The Shenkman family has been a major supporter of everything good in Ottawa for as long as I can remember,” he said at the announcement. “They’ve been a force for positive change in the City of Ottawa.”

The endowment fund “is the new way of doing things,” O’Brien added. “This is the way of the future. It is an example of the way the City of Ottawa can partner with the community to achieve wonderful results. The city is not in the business of fundraising, but by working with the AOE, we are launching a campaign that is already more successful than the initial estimates that any of us could possibly have dreamed of. The centre will be a catalyst for the east end economy, and by creating sustainable funding to help build the capacity of local arts organizations and artists, they are also assisting creating a climate of confidence … that will attract other businesses to this wonderful area of the city.”