Tenants Given 90 Days To Vacate Centene Center for the Arts

Soon, the Arts and Education Council of Greater St. Louis’ Centene Center for the Arts will no longer be a home for St. Louis arts organizations.

On January 13, the tenants of 3547 Olive Street in Grand Center — all arts and education organizations — were given notice that they must vacate in 90 days and that the Arts and Education Council would be putting the building up for sale.

The day before, at 5:16 p.m., Ryan Henderson, executive assistant to the council’s president/CEO and administrative operations coordinator, sent out a brief email inviting the tenants to a 10 a.m. hybrid in-person/virtual meeting to discuss changes in face of “the restructuring.”

Later that day, Henderson emailed out a 21-minute recording of the meeting, which begins with almost four minutes of silence. It is the only eviction notice the arts organizations had received.

In the meeting, Jessireé Jenkins, Arts and Education Council grants and programs coordinator, announced the sale and said that Chris Hanson, executive director of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, was willing to help relocate tenants to Kranzberg facilities and honor current rent costs.

Jenkins cited low occupancy as the reason for the sale. There are 14 current tenants, she stated, which is about 50 percent occupancy.

“I know it's short notice, and it's unexpected,” she says in the recording. “But this building is not producing the income that the organization A&E needs. It’s not, of course, a core part to our mission, so we had to make the difficult decision to put it on the market.”

The Arts and Education Council’s own offices will also “probably not be here after April 30,” Jenkins says. She also advised the tenants not to count on using the buildings’ events space past three weeks.

Reached by phone this morning, Jenkins told the RFT that the staff had heard from the Arts and Education Council board of directors that the building might go up for sale in November or December, adding that the board might have been discussing the possibility before then. She said that the process to sell had begun but that she had not seen “a contract or anything.”

She said the decision was made to be “judicious” and to focus on the mission.

“What we do is get money into the community to support organizations,” she says. “We don't necessarily need a building to do that.”

The Arts and Education Council has been located in the Centene Center since 2006 and purchased the building in 2012 for $1.26 million from Owens Development, according to the St. Louis Business Journal. The idea was to become an arts incubator, providing low-cost rent and shared performance and meeting spaces. At that time, the building held 18 arts and education organizations.

Founded in 1963, the Arts and Education is an arts fund that draws its support from private contributions. According to the organization’s website, it provides grants to 39 area organizations through its six grant programs.

It’s also known for the St. Louis Art Awards, which recognize the “best of our region’s arts community.” Earlier this year, the Arts and Education Council pushed back that signature program from January 30 to April 17, citing supply chain issues with the awards as the reason.

According to the Arts and Education Council’s most recently available 990 — the information return all nonprofits must file to the IRS — the organization shows a net profit of $672,048 for the tax year that ended in 2019 and $140,359 in rent and ancillary income.

In response to an email the RFT sent on January 11, Arts and Education Council board of directors member Chris Dornfeld denied that the board had voted to dissolve the organization, writing “we will issue a statement about some staff and organization changes soon.”

On January 12, the RFT asked the organization’s president and CEO, Lyah LeFlore-Ituen, by email if she had resigned earlier that month and if the organization was having cash flow issues, asking whether the Centene building could be a contributing factor. LeFlore-Ituen did not respond to that email or a follow-up inquiry sent on January 17. She is still listed on the Council’s website as president and CEO. (Jenkins, the grants and programs coordinator, would not confirm if LeFlore-Ituen is still with the organization.)

LeFloere-Ituen began her job as CEO on July 18, 2022. A native St. Louisan and best-selling author with 30 years in the entertainment industry, she’d moved home a few years earlier to take care of her ailing mother, former poet laureate Shirley Bradley LeFlore, before her 2019 passing.

Email the author at [email protected]

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